


Springeresque

by LyricalKris



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 59,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1524668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricalKris/pseuds/LyricalKris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice Brandon Whitlock is twenty-two years old and the story of her life already read like a tragedy- a tragedy worthy of the Jerry Springer show in its twists and turns. Charlie Swan's life was more sedate, but it hadn't always been. You never can tell how or when two souls will connect or what they can do for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jessypt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessypt/gifts).



**Dedication: To one of my favorite people, jessypt. My girl loves angst just as much as I do, and I love her even though she “made” me write Alice/Charlie. (Did she not understand how much she traumatized me by making me write Carlisle/Bella...ffs). Happy birthday, lovely.**

**A/N and Disclaimers: I am pretty sure if I was SM, I’d be fainting at the pairing alone. Holy hell. But then again, Charlie always did like Alice, didn’t he? Heh. Anyway. This story is a bit heavy. As always, I don’t do warnings, so if you have a question, please ask. I’ll be happy to answer.**

* * *

 

**Prologue:**

 

“My life is Springer worthy. Springer-esque sounds fancier, doesn’t it?

 

“I witnessed my father murder my mother when I was three years old, a fact I repressed until I was eleven. My stepmother resented me. When I started to remember, I was so confused. She told me I was being insane, and my father, not wanting to get caught, let her believe it. Then he started to beat me, telling me I was crazy and I needed to keep my mouth shut.

 

“I believed them. For a long time, I believed them.”

 

“When I was thirteen, my father left bruises on me that I couldn’t hide. They took me away, and put me in foster care.

 

“The Cullens were good to me. Loving. Caring. They had two biological kids and two kids other people had fucked up. They were too good for me, but that didn’t matter to them. Such good people. I wanted to be better for them. I wish I could have been.

 

“So there I was with Emmett and Edward Cullen and Jasper. Jasper Whitlock. My foster brother. Just as fucked up as I was, stuck in this idyllic little family who couldn’t help the way they reminded us how well adjusted we weren’t. Of course we fell in love. I married him the minute, the minute, I turned eighteen, and when we went to school, the idiot kids called us disgusting because it was incest. We didn’t care. We were in love, and life was going to be better.

 

“And now, I’m twenty-two, and a widow.”

 

Alice Whitlock looked up at him, her eyes wide and lost. “I’m twenty-two, and my biography would be as thick as the last Harry Potter book. I’m just…” She waved her hands in the air helplessly. “What do I do now?”

 

Charlie Swan watched as the young woman wandered away as if in a daze, his tongue still tied. Charlie didn’t even know what to say when his eighteen-year-old daughter Bella was upset over a failed test. There they were, standing at her husband’s early grave.

What was he supposed to say to any of that?

 

Bella came up to him and looped her arm through his. “Dad, can Alice stay with us for a while?”

 

Charlie cleared his throat, blinking down at his daughter. “What’s wrong with Carlisle and Esme?”

 

“They’re taking it hard. They loved him, too. She just… she’s having a hard time being there. She can stay with me in my room. Is that okay?”

 

Charlie looked back to where the raven-haired woman was looking out toward the horizon, not really seeing anything. “Yeah, Bell,” he said. “She can stay.”

 

If it was the only thing he could do, he was damn sure going to do it.

* * *

**A/N: I don’t think this is going to be very long (don’t I always say that). Many thanks to barburella and songster for stepping outside their comfort zones, and of course to jessypt since I asked her to beta her own fic. Hehehe**

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So here we go. I wish us all luck.

Charlie had always liked Alice. He hadn’t thought he would. In fact, when Bella started hanging around at the Cullen house, Charlie was naturally wary of the lot of them. Not only was she obviously falling for this kid, Edward, but she was fast becoming best friends with one of the Cullen’s foster kids. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of his then seventeen-year-old daughter hanging out with a twenty-one-year-old misfit. The last thing he needed was for Bella to get the idea in her head that being married at eighteen was a good idea.

 

But Alice had proved him wrong. She was a good friend to Bella, and when she came over, she made the house brighter. Unlike the other young people Bella brought over on occasion, Alice seemed to think of him as a real person instead of a parental unit or worse, a cop. She was interesting and interested.

 

It got to the point Edward and Alice came over together.

 

“Is my daughter using you to get me not to complain about how much time she spends with your brother?” he’d asked once it dawned on him.

 

Alice had grinned and winked at him. “Don’t worry, Charlie.” She’d put her hands on his shoulders and leaned down so her voice was soft in his ear, her breath warm against his skin. “Don’t tell him I said so, but Edward is one of the good ones. Bella’s in good hands.”

 

Now the troubled young woman was a ghost in his house. Of course he knew she was a foster child and their stories were rarely easy, but he couldn’t wrap his head around how a person was supposed to survive the kind of tragedy she had, let alone in triplicate.

 

Most of his life, Charlie had been a heavy sleeper. Getting his six to eight hours of sleep only made sense. Even as a very young man, he wasn’t one to challenge that system. He liked how he felt when his mind was clear. He could think better, function better. What could be bad about that?

 

That should have been his first clue that his relationship with Renee Higginbotham was ill advised at best. Everything about Renee was a whirlwind from the way she spoke--bouncing from one topic to the next with hardly a breath in between--to their relatively short-lived romance. She’d wrecked havoc on his sleep. He had never been more tired in all his life, but he’d also never been so enthralled, so impassioned, and in love.

 

But like a hurricane, when she left, taking their baby daughter with her, she left a wake of destruction and debris. Between the course of their relationship and the aftermath, Charlie didn’t sleep well for several years.

 

Now he found himself restless again, awake and staring at the wall in the middle of the night. Irritated, he climbed out bed. There was nothing useful about being awake at two in the morning.

 

After another few minutes’ deliberation he figured as long as he was up, he might as well get a sandwich out of the ordeal.

 

When he stepped out into the hallway, he paused. Bella’s door was cracked open.

 

His daughter had gone back to school months before, but Alice stayed. Charlie couldn’t say he understood. He knew the Cullens wanted nothing more than to help her. They were the nurturing type - exactly the kind of people who knew the right thing to do, the best way to offer comfort in any situation. But for whatever reason, Alice felt just a little bit better in Charlie’s house instead of theirs. Maybe it was the memories. She and Jasper had both been loved and cherished there. Heck if Charlie understood what was going on in that head of hers. He missed her easy smile though. He missed the spark in her eyes when she was telling a story and the enthusiasm in her tone.

 

Charlie padded across the hall and peered around the corner of Bella’s door carefully. It was dark and empty. When he looked downstairs he could see a light coming from the living room area. He tapped his fingers on the wall, wondering if he should retreat to his bedroom.

 

It was a silly, cowardly thing to think. First off, this was his house. There was no reason he should feel like a prisoner in his own house. For what reason? Because he was scared he’d go downstairs and Alice would be crying and he’d have to do something about it?

 

Shaking his head, Charlie headed down the stairs. He peeked around the corner of the landing and spotted Alice immediately. She wasn’t crying. In fact, if anything, she looked curious. She was curled up in the window seat with only the small lamp above her lit. On her lap was…

 

A photograph album?

 

Charlie hardly recognized it. It had been a long time since there was film to develop and longer still since he’d owned a camera, digital or otherwise. Renee had given Bella a camera for her birthday senior year, but she rarely printed those photos out. They went straight to Facebook or whatever website that passed for a photo album these days. Hey, at least you couldn’t lose those in a fire, he figured, even though he found the idea of putting private photos on the Internet for all to consume more than a little bizarre.

 

Charlie only owned one photo album. There were a few in a box in the attic, leftover relics from his parents, but there was only one album in the main part of the house. It was an album Charlie kept hidden away, and it hadn’t seen the light of day since Bella was two years old.

 

He cleared his throat more out of habit than anything. It was a tactic he used both on his teenage daughter when she’d still been in his house and with people he caught breaking minor laws. Alice looked up, but she didn’t look guilty. “Hey, Charlie. What are you doing up?”

 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

 

“I’m snooping,” she said, utterly unapologetic. “I found this in a drawer somewhere. It looks like no one has touched it in ages.” She readjusted herself on the window seat so she was sitting up with her feet on the ground. “Come over here and give me some background.”

 

Charlie hesitated. There was a good reason he’d hidden that album away. He wasn’t even sure why he kept something that reminded him of everything he’d lost. But that had been years ago. Since then he’d gotten his daughter back. It was pathetic to feel so tangled up in knots about a few old photos, wasn’t it?

 

He crossed the room and hesitated again when she patted the seat beside her. The space wasn’t big, and Charlie wondered for a few seconds just how appropriate it was to sit so close. He wasn’t used to sharing intimate space at all. Even when Bella lived with him, there was always enough room for both of them to have their own personal space and then some. In the end, though, he sat. Alice was an adult, and she obviously wasn’t uncomfortable seeing as she was the one inviting him to sit down.

 

Alice wasted no time spreading the album over both their laps. She scooted even closer, so their legs were touching, and flipped to the first page. The first picture stung more than Charlie wanted it to. It was a picture of him and Renee at their senior prom. They looked happy and-

 

“You look so young. Like fourteen,” Alice said. “You’re just babies.”

 

Charlie snorted. “We were both still seventeen though I think Renee turned eighteen a week later.” He hesitated, but for some reason the words tumbled out anyway. “And as for babies, we were about to have one.”

 

“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize you were so young when you had Bella.” She offered him a small smile, still just a ghost of the grin he was used to, and bumped his shoulder. “You’re quite the spring chicken.”

 

Charlie shook his head.

 

“So.” Alice flipped a few more pages to where a now very pregnant Renee stood in the kitchen, the kitchen of this house, hands on her hips and paintbrush in her hand. “How did a snot-nosed kid end up with his own house?”

 

“My grandfather. He left me a small fortune when he died. It was supposed to pay for some fancy college, a trip to Europe, and then maybe, maybe, first and last month’s rent on my first apartment far away from here. But I had a high school girlfriend who already wanted more than I could offer her. A house seemed like a good idea. Why not. I was already in over my head. I squeezed new dad, new husband, and first time homeowner into the same six month period.”

 

Alice’s breath caught, and when she looked up, there was pain in her eyes. “You got married when you turned eighteen, too?”

 

“That same day.”

 

They both fell into a silence too heavy to be comfortable. Charlie wasn’t sure what to do with it, what to say, or whether it was her sadness or his that made it so unbearable. He cleared his throat and started rambling. “It was a lot to handle. Even with the huge down payment, I still had the mortgage to consider. I had a job at Newton’s just like Bella. It wasn’t Newton’s then, but you get the idea. I was going to school. I had already figured out there was a guaranteed job waiting for me at the station if I could get through my general ed and police academy training.” He tapped the picture of his very pregnant wife. “I told Renee she could do whatever she wanted to the house.”

 

Alice huffed. “That explains why the cabinets are yellow and green. They’re horrible, you know. Both colors alone would be just… ugh. Together?” She shook her head.

 

Charlie had to smirk. He knew his cabinets were ugly, but there was a sense of fondness when he thought about them. Renee was nothing if not quirky. She saw the world differently than most, and he still admired that about her. "Renee always said she was trying to make the place brighter. I didn’t much care what color my cabinets are so I let her do whatever made her happy." If only making her happy had been as simple as bright colored cabinets.

 

Alice hummed. "That was always going to fail.”

 

It took Charlie a few seconds to figure out she wasn’t talking about his marriage, though she could have been.

 

“You can’t make a house bright with paint alone,” Alice said. “Even paint needs light. The answer here is simple. You need a source of light that isn’t the sun since we have no control of that here in Forks. You need lamps. Track lighting or, even better, recessed lighting.”

 

She shifted so her back was against the wall of the window seat and she was facing him, her knee against his thigh. “Hey, so here’s an idea. If you’re interested, I could fix up your kitchen for you. We can do the whole nine - fix the cabinets and the lights. I can do all the work, even the electrical stuff.”

 

Charlie tilted his head, taken aback. “You’re a hairdresser. How does a hairdresser know how to do electrical work?”

 

Her expression was disparaging. “I’m a cosmetologist. Get it right. And that’s not the only thing I want to do with my life. It was just easy. I had to be able to support myself while I figured out what I really wanted to do.” She waved her hand. “Anyway. When I was a kid, Esme used to take me with her to all those home renovations she did. She said it was to keep me out of trouble.” Alice rolled her eyes, but her look was fond. “It was actually all very interesting, and I learned a lot from her and the people she worked with. I learned how to do a lot of things including minor electrical work, which is all your kitchen would take. I’m not licensed or anything like that, but I could do it.”

 

She was serious, he realized, and more than that, the more she talked about, the more excited she became.

 

“Charlie, it would be great. Just a little work could increase the value of your house. We could go to Olympia this weekend or even to Seattle if you wanted to drop in on Bella for a bit. It would be so much fun.”

 

Charlie was a little bowled over. Was she really asking to do home renovations on his house? “I… I don’t know. Why would you do that for me?”

 

“It’d be the least I can do. I’ve been here for too long without really pulling my weight.”

 

“It’s not like I mind the company. And you’ve cooked a lot. And bought groceries.”

 

Alice dropped her gaze. “I just… The shop doesn’t keep me busy enough. It would be nice to have something to do. A project to work on. To keep me distracted.” She raised her head and tried for a smile. “And really, those cabinets are hideous. At least let me redo those… but I really think you should let me work with the lighting. I’ll even help out on the cost since it was my idea. Please?”

 

There was a spark of life in her big brown eyes that he hadn’t seen in too many months. How could he say no to that? “Alright. Fine. If that’s what you really want.”

 

Alice squeaked in pleasure and threw her arms around his neck. “You’re the best, Charlie.”

  
He chuckled, squeezing her awkwardly. “Don’t see how you figure that, but I’ll take it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So thanks to everyone who’s giving this a shot. Many thanks to my jessypt who is always pushing my boundaries. I usually don’t regret it. Usually.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello, lovelies! Happy Mother’s Day to most of you, including my lovely jessypt and my beautiful songster.

When Charlie got home the day before their Seattle trip, he thought at first the house was empty. Then he heard a muffled voice coming from the direction of the garage. “Charlie? Is that you?”

 

Alice started talking, yelling through the door, before he got close, so most of what he heard was garbled words in a tone of mock-grave admonishment. A smile tugged at his lips. She was a quirky thing. She tended to start a conversation in the middle.

 

He opened the garage door just in time. Alice, already coming toward him, caught her foot on a stack of junk in the middle of the floor. She pitched forward with a little yelp, and Charlie surged forward to catch her. Alice huffed with the impact, her hands braced on his waist. She blinked sporadically, startled.

 

“You all right?” Charlie asked.

 

Her eyes met his. “Yeah.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “This is exactly what I’m talking about.” She smacked his chest with a light hand. “You have things in little piles everywhere. It gives the impression of neatness, but there’s no sense of order to it.”

 

She lingered another moment in silence, and Charlie blinked, startled at the change in the air. Why hadn’t he let her go yet? He cleared his throat and took a step back, his hand falling away. “Well, uh. I’ve never had problem finding what I need.”

 

At that, she grinned and stepped over to a pile, beginning to rummage. “You could do so much with this space. Maybe that’ll be our second project. After the kitchen. It wouldn’t take long to organize this place. A few hooks and you can have your poles up on the wall nice and neat instead of leaning in a heap. Then a wall of cork board for all your...uh..."  She wrinkled her nose and leaned over to pluck something out of a pile. “What the hell is this?”

 

Charlie’s cheek twitched. She was holding the thing at arm’s length, pinched between her fingers with a look of disgust. “It’s a fishing hat”

 

“It’s a monstrosity.” She studied it with a dubious expression. “This is like… sheik of the desert.” She pulled at the long flaps that hung down around the sides and back of the thing.

 

“It’s meant to keep the sun off your neck--keep you cool.This might come as a shock, but some things are more functional than pretty.”

 

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow, her expression cool. “This might come as a shock to you, but it’s possible to be both functional and pretty.” She pushed up onto her tiptoes and settled the hat on his head, smoothing the flaps over his ears. She pursed her lips, amused.

 

Charlie hadn’t ever thought to feel silly in his hat--it was a practical thing and most fishermen he knew used them--but he was strangely self-conscious then. But then Alice grinned. “It suits you,” she said.

 

“Well, color me relieved.”

 

She chuckled and turned on her heel. “Anyway, one project at a time. I’m trying to figure out what tools you have in case we need to buy any, but I can’t find them in all this clutter.”

 

Charlie flushed and rubbed the back of his neck. “The clutter really doesn’t make a difference. You can’t find something that isn’t there.”

 

Alice stopped her rummaging and turned to stare at him. “What?”

 

“I have almost no tools.”

 

“How is that possible? Even I have a toolbox. In my closet at home, next to all the spangly, pretty things I sew on my clothes is my toolbox.”

 

Charlie grimaced. “I have a hammer and a wrench. I’m pretty sure I have pliers.” She was still staring. “I’m sure there are nails. I remember Bella told me one summer I had to have them in jars like Jake’s dad.” He pointed. “They’re over there.”

 

All at once, Alice’s incredulous stare turned into a giggle and the giggle tumbled headlong into a full on belly laugh. Then she was laughing. Hard. One arm wrapped around her middle because she couldn’t seem to stop. Charlie was flabbergasted--just what the hell was so damn funny--but at the same time, he couldn’t help his smile. It had been so long since he’d heard this woman laugh. It was a good sound, a happy sound.

 

He liked it. But he still didn’t understand.

 

“I’m sorry, Charlie.” She sat down heavily atop his large ice chest, her arms still wrapped around her middle as she tittered and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I don’t know why it struck me as so funny. It was just the way you said it. You have nails in a jar.” She giggled again. “And then I just pictured you trying to put together a new kitchen with a few nails and a hammer. How on earth do you keep the house in order without tools?”

 

Charlie put his hands on his hips, hoping his expression was more stern than sheepish. “I need something fixed, I get one of the delinquent kids to do it as part of a… uh, a plea bargain, I guess.”

 

Her eyebrows shot up and he realized how that sounded.  "Not like that. Nothing official. Nothing big. They're just kids I found doing something stupid. The kinds of things that are relatively harmless but can escalate,  you know? Most kids, you let them off with a warning and they learn their lesson, but some of them needed more. A distraction that wasn’t destructive. I did it a lot with kids who were starting to run with the wrong crowd.  When I could catch it,  you know. "

 

Alice cocked her head. “Really?”

 

He shrugged. “I was never really good at fixing things around the house. A lot of those kids are. It helps sometimes. They have something productive to do with their time. They make an honest buck, and my porch gets repaired or whatever. Or I might let them give me an oil change. Depends on what they’re good at and if they’re receptive. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t, but there you go.”

 

Her smile was huge. “Well, that’s sweet. Look at you. Reforming delinquent kids. It’s no wonder you get along with Mom and Dad.”

 

“So what is it you need anyway?”

 

“Oh, you know. Standard stuff. Drills. Saws.”

 

“Saws?”

 

“Yeah. Not the old fashioned kind. The kind with batteries. How else do you expect me to cut into the ceiling?”

 

Now it was Charlie’s turn to stare in shock. For some reason, someone as small as Alice handling anything that could cut into his ceiling didn’t compute. Rationally he knew this was ridiculous. He knew the kind of saw Alice meant, and there was no reason she wouldn’t be able to handle such a thing. Still, the young woman drew out a protective streak in him.

 

“I see that worried face,” Alice said. “I’m not Bella. That girl is always a bit spaced out. I love that about her. She’s creative, like my brother. They’re always lost in their heads. Thinking. Which has its perks, but I guess it makes concentrating on sharp objects a bit of a challenge. Me? I don’t have that problem. I’ve never had a single stitch. Did you know that?”

 

For a moment, just a moment, Charlie thought he saw something dark and pained flash through her eyes. But when he looked again, studying her more carefully, her features eased. “Not one stitch, huh?”

 

“Nope.”

 

Charlie grunted and toed a spot on the floor. “Well, it can’t all be the spacing out thing. Bella’s careful enough when she needs to be. Might be bad genetics.” He offered her his hand, spreading his thumb and finger wide so she could see the thick scar there.

 

Alice whistled. She reached out to stroke the small but thick knot of scarred skin there. There was a strange,  fascinated reverence to her touch. “How the hell did you do that?”

 

“Talent.” He rolled his eyes. “Shop class. The very first day.”

 

“You don’t even do a project the first day.”

 

“Like I said. Talent.” Charlie’s lips quirked up despite his embarrassment. “Makes you wonder who thought it was a good idea to give me a gun, huh?”

 

He was rewarded with a warm chuckle. “Terrifying thought. But that explains the lack of tools in the house. You would have lost all your fingers by now. Don’t worry. Mom has what we need as far as tools go. I'll raid the garage."

 

"Mhmm." Charlie stroked at his chin wondering if he was overstepping his boundaries with his next words. "Seems like this is a pretty big project."

 

She shrugged. "Bigger than some."

 

"I still think you're crazy for doing this for me, but seeing as you're set on it, it seems like the kind of thing your mother might like to help you with."

 

At that Alice stayed quiet. She looked down, busying herself by picking a few random things up and setting them down again. After a few moments of this she spoke softly. "She would." After another beat, she looked up and gave him a small smile. "Maybe I'll call her."

 

**~0~**

 

"What is it with you and Bella and ancient trucks?" Alice asked when they got on the road to Seattle the next day.

 

Charlie glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes. "My truck was born in the 90's. Hers was born before I was. Not even close to the same thing."

 

"True." She poked at the dials and shook her head. "Oh, well. I came prepared." She took a squareish device out of her purse and clipped it to the overhead mirror. "Bluetooth speaker. Now we won't be subjected to the radio."

 

"Obviously that would be chaos."

 

She gave him a look but then turned back to her phone to scroll through her music.

 

Charlie had been nervous about this drive. It was several hours from Forks to Seattle, and he wondered if Alice would fill the silence by talking about things Charlie didn't know how to handle. After all, she wasn't what anyone could call recovered from the loss of her husband some five months before.

 

It went beyond those five months. Death was never easy. Expected or not, young or old, it was never easy. Yet for Alice, the horror of losing her husband at the mind-boggling young age of twenty-two had been multiplied several-fold by the process of his death. He'd been in a horrific car accident, but there was no easy death there. He'd hung on, or at least, he'd appeared to. He would crash then stabilize. Something would go wrong, some part of his body would give out, and then it would get better.

 

Eventually, the emergencies petered out, and Jasper merely seemed to sleep. The doctors predicted he would wake from his coma. They gave Alice and the rest of the family various statistics, other cases. Eventually, though, they declared him brain dead, and Alice was faced with the horrible decision of whether or not to remove him from life support.

 

Alice had signed the paperwork five months before, but her husband had been lost to her for nearly nine months.

 

She would turn twenty-three in another couple of weeks. It would mark the first birthday without Jasper in eleven years. It was also her fifth wedding anniversary. Five days after that would mark Jasper's twenty-fourth birthday.

 

Charlie had lunch or dinner with Carlisle and Esme Cullen at least once a week. Despite their best efforts, Alice was distant with them, and they worried. Of course they worried. There was plenty to worry about. Far be it from Charlie to dictate how anyone should go about grieving, but despite her mild despondence, it seemed to Charlie there had to be something bigger on the horizon. It was a feeling he got, a gut instinct, and it was one the Cullens shared.

 

Esme had wondered if Alice stayed because she felt a kinship with Charlie. Alice had to talk to someone at some point. Why not Charlie?

 

Charlie had a few very good arguments in the why not Charlie camp, but what could he do about that? It wasn't as though he was going to turn the young woman away if she needed help. He supposed he would figure something out if the time ever came. In the meantime, yeah, he was nervous about it.

 

But the car ride was better than uneventful, it was nice. It wasn't long before Charlie forgot there was supposed to be something wrong. They bonded over music--she had eclectic taste that included many of the bands he'd listened to when he was in high school--and segued naturally onto other topics, none of them very deep. It was enjoyable to the point Charlie started when he realized the ferry was so close.

 

He was almost sad that the drive was over.

 

On the ferry, he offered to get them coffee. When he got back to the table he’d left her at, Alice was nowhere to be seen. He waited a minute, thinking she might have gone to the restroom, but when she didn’t reappear, he went looking.

 

There weren’t many places she could be on the ferry, so he found her fairly easily. She was at the back, outside. It was a weird place to be. Seattle was rarely warm in the depths of summer. It was the dead of winter now. It wasn’t raining, but it was freezing outside.

 

“Alice?” he called as he stepped out into the bitter cold.

 

She didn’t answer. She was standing, staring out at the rapidly approaching Seattle skyline with a far off, somewhat tortured expression on her face. He didn’t have to read minds to know she had to have been thinking about Jasper. Doubtless the last time she’d been to Seattle had been with him.

 

Charlie hadn’t ever lost anyone the way she’d lost her husband, but he knew what it was like when every road, every store, every restaurant was haunted with memories of things that were out of his reach.

 

He hesitated, but then he put a hand to her shoulder to get her attention. She jumped and sucked in a breath. It was hard to tell if she’d been crying. Her cheeks were bitten red by the cold, and her eyes were half-closed against the wind.

 

“You’re going to turn into an icicle out here.” He forced himself to keep his tone light.

 

“Oh,” she said quietly. She blinked and then shivered as though she had only just noticed the cold.

 

He recognized the expression on her face. It was close to the look of people at the scene of an accident. Shock, he would have said if he didn’t know better. It wasn’t shock, under the circumstances he didn’t see how it could have been, but it had to be something similar. She was spaced out in the same way victims of shock could get. Her eyes weren’t focused at all, and though her teeth began to chatter violently, she still made no move to leave.

 

This he could handle. He didn’t hesitate. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her inside. He guided her to the nearest plastic chair. He shrugged out of his jacket, draping it over her and told her to sit tight. He was back another minute later with fresher, hotter coffee which he put into her hands and wrapped her fingers around.

 

“Drink,” he said as he sat down beside her.

 

She closed her eyes and drank.

 

When she opened them again, she looked to him, her expression furtive. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Nothing to apologize for.” He shifted his weight and wondered for the millionth time in his life how some people knew how to do this… when it was okay to ask and when it wasn’t. What if his assumption was wrong? He could possibly be adding to her stress. “Was it Jasper?” he asked finally.

 

She let out a long breath, looking out the window. “Yes.”

 

When she didn’t elaborate, he huffed. “You know… I’m not… Well, I’d have to say I’m not the best person with all this. I’d probably stick my foot in my mouth more than once, but… I’d listen. You know. If you needed...wanted to talk. You can.”

 

She looked up then through red-rimmed eyes and smiled. It was a weak smile, like before, but genuine. She surprised him by wrapping her arm around him and laying her head on his shoulder. “Not today,” she said.

  
She didn’t move again until they had to get back to the car. Mostly, Charlie figured she needed his warmth. That he could definitely give. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Poor songser. I know some of you think my suffering whilst writing these PAIRINGS THAT SHOULD NOT BE are hilarious. You should see my notes. You have songster twitching in the corner while jessypt pets her and tells her it’s okay, just relax and go with it.
> 
> Thanks to my girls. I love you. And thanks to all of you. How are we feeling thus far?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Ha. I am at school. Not particularly happy about it. Rawrawrawrawr.

“This is not a good idea. Why did you tell me you told Bella we were coming?”

 

Alice looked over her shoulder in mild exasperation. “Because I knew you were going to call her and ruin my fun. You expect me to pass up the chance of a lifetime? I think not.”

 

“What chance? A chance for what?”

 

“To catch Bella doing something naughty, of course.”

 

Charlie blanched, but he tried to cover up how much that idea terrified him. “That’s your chance of a lifetime? Honey, you’ve got to set your sights a bit higher.”

 

She smirked and beckoned. “I’m still not passing. Come on.”

 

“This is a bad idea.”

 

Alice walked back and took him by the hand. “Her roommate is a preacher’s daughter. How much trouble could she possibly be getting into?”

 

“I’m not an idiot. She’s away from home, and her boyfriend goes to the same school. I know how that equation works.”

 

Alice’s eyes went wide in an expression of mock-scandal. “Charlie, you have such a filthy mind.” She put a hand to her chest. “Bella is my very best friend. Are you insinuating we might catch such a young, innocent flower in a…” She gasped for effect. “Compromising position?”

 

Charlie swayed on his feet, feeling ill at the thought. Alice laughed and tugged his hand. “We’ll be fine. The most we’re going to walk in on is Bella smoking a bit of weed.”

 

She ignored his startled whine of protest as she pushed the door of Bella’s dorm room open, dragging Charlie in behind her.

 

At first, he was sure his worst nightmare was realized. He got an eyeful of some guy’s naked ass as he pumped away. Charlie caught a glimpse of brown hair before he could avert his eyes.

 

Predictable chaos ensued. There were shouts of protest from both Charlie and Alice. The two in the bed squeaked, cursed, and scrambled. The blankets rustled in their attempt to get covered. Charlie, who hadn’t let go of Alice’s hand, dragged her back into the hallway and slammed the door closed.

 

Alice slapped her palm against the door. “Sock on the doorknob!” she called through the wood. “You put a sock on the doorknob. That’s College 101. You need a system. Agh.” She dug her fists into her eyes. “What is seen cannot be unseen. Scrawny boy butt. Ew.”

 

She was a sight. Her cheeks were bright red with embarrassment. She bounced from foot to foot as she yelled at the closed door. The sight combined with Charlie’s utter relief at his last glimpse of the couple--who were most certainly not Bella and Edward--was too much. He started to laugh. He knew his face was as red as Alice’s. She turned her glare from the door to him, her hands on her hips and her lips pursed. Charlie only laughed harder.

 

“Charlie,” she said, making the word a drawn out whine. “It’s not funny.”

 

“Oh yes…” He gasped. “Oh yes it is.” His words dissolved into his chuckles, and he had to wrap an arm around his middle, bending at the waist as he did. “You...you… This is what you...wanted.”

 

“I just wanted to surprise Bella. I didn’t think anyone would be doing that. They’re supposed to have a sock on the door,” she repeated.

 

Of course, her protests made it worse. His eyes watered and his chest ached, but he couldn’t stop. She growled but then she giggled. It was a small laugh at first, but it got louder as his laughing sickness proved to be infectious.

 

Charlie leaned against the wall for support, and she joined him. “Stop,” she said, her voice strained between titters. “Stop laughing.” She sucked in a breath while she could. “You’re making me… making me…Just stop.”

 

“I ca...I can’t.”

 

They both devolved again, each of them setting the other off. Chalie slumped down further on the wall until he was sitting and bowed his head. Alice slid down with him and muffled her laughter against his shoulder.

 

After another minute, they were finally coming down. Their breaths were ragged, interrupted every now and again by a stray giggle or a hiccup. Some small part of Charlie felt so stupid. He had to look ridiculous. Here he was, a grown man, sitting on the floor in a dorm hallway, panting and giggling his fool head off. Some of the passing kids were staring, but Charlie couldn’t say he really cared. Hearing Alice laugh again, like she did when he told her about his lack of tools, was more than enough to make a little embarrassment worth it. She was pressed against his side, her body shaking occasionally with residual mirth, and he was glad she felt good, even if it was only for a few minutes.

 

The door beside them opened, and Angela Weber peered out. Her eyes were wide and scared behind her glasses. Behind her was a passive-looking, dark-haired boy about her same age. “Chief Swan,” she said, her voice a squeak. “And Alice. Hi, Alice.”

 

“Hey, Angela.”

 

Charlie got to his feet, helping Alice up as he did. “Hello, Angela.”

 

“I, um… I’m sorry? About…” She gestured helplessly at the room.

 

“That wasn’t your fault.” Charlie’s cheeks heated again. “We, uh… We should have knocked.” He glanced out of the side of his vision at Alice. “Or called ahead.”

 

“You’re not going to tell my dad, are you?” Angela asked, blurting the words so fast, it took Charlie a few extra seconds to untangle them in his head.

 

He huffed, looking down at his feet so he wouldn’t start laughing again. “None of my business.” Like he was going to tell the good reverend he’d walked into his daughter’s room while she’d been undoubtedly naked and screwing her boyfriend. That wasn’t a conversation that was going to happen ever.

 

Angela sagged against the door and looked over her shoulder at the boy. “Um. This is Ben. Ben, this is Charlie Swan. He’s Bella’s dad. And this is Alice Whitlock.”

 

Ben nodded. “Sir,” he said to Charlie, his voice threatening to pitch up into higher octaves. He cleared his throat and looked at Alice. “Ma’am.”

 

“Ma’am? Ma’am? Oh, hell no.” Alice squared her shoulders. “Okay, sonny, you asked for it.” She crossed her arms and started firing off questions. She asked Ben about his intentions with Angela, if he’d brought protection, if he was sure he knew how to use it right. She didn’t give him a chance to answer, she just kept asking more, all the while beginning to encroach on his personal space.

 

In no time flat, Alice had the poor freshman sputtering. He looked like he was about to cry. Taking pity on the boy, Charlie put his hand on Alice’s shoulder, halting her tirade. “Where’s Bella?” he asked Angela.

 

Pale as a sheet but a lot calmer than her bedmate--she knew Alice after all--Angela cleared her throat so she could answer. “She’s probably out front. She and Edward like to, uh… study there.”

 

“Thanks,” Charlie said, steering Alice away from Ben. “Sorry again.”

 

Once outside, Alice broke into a fresh, although not hysterical, wave of giggles. “That was fantastic.”

 

“Sure. Fantastic. If fantastic is synonymous with horrifying, let’s go with that. I’ve never been so glad I don’t go to church. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look her father in the eyes again.”

 

Alice tugged at his sleeve. “Come on, Charlie. When was the last time you laughed like that?”

 

“Can’t say. I don’t remember.”

 

She smiled at him, but then her eyes caught something behind his back and her expression brightened. “Oh, look. There’s Bella.”

 

Charlie looked and instantly wished he hadn’t. His daughter was sitting on a bench near the opposite side of the building with Edward at her side. He could see she had a textbook on her lap, but she was ignoring it in favor of making out with her boyfriend. “Ah, hell.”

 

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this. Looks like I might get my moment after all.”

 

With that, she dashed away, sticking to the side of the building as best she could. She crept carefully and snuck behind the bench. She leaned in close, close, closer to the amorous couple.

 

When they finally figured out she was there, Charlie heard Bella yelp from where he was standing. He shook his head but smiled at the sight. This was the Alice he’d known not so long ago: mischievous and happy. He hoped it was a sign she was healing, but what did he know? He could only be glad she was still capable of this kind of levity.

 

Shaking that off, he went to greet his daughter.

**~0~**

Charlie glanced over as Bella fell into step beside him. He nodded ahead of them to where Alice was staring at light fixtures, occasionally shoving boxes into Edward’s arms so she could compare and contrast. “She’s a whirlwind,” Charlie said.

 

Bella snorted. “And she’s going to get Esme in on all this. You’re so screwed, Dad. You’re not even going to recognize the kitchen by the time they’re done.”

 

“It’s just a kitchen, and it’s been almost nineteen years. It’s time for a change.”

 

“Oh, really? This from the same guy who refuses to buy digital movies even though your TV plays them, and all because DVDs still exist? Not even BluRay, but DVD.”

 

“See now, there’s change and there’s unnecessary change. You should be able to touch your movies and your books for that matter.”

 

Bella rifled through her purse and held up her tablet. “I’m carrying like three hundred books, fifteen movies, and all nine seasons of Supernatural with me.”

 

“You can’t read three hundred books at once. Not even you, bookworm.”

 

“That’s not the point.”

 

“Well, when I see the point of needing all my movies on some database god only knows where that I can’t even see, I’ll let you know. Alice, on the other hand, made a completely reasonable point about adding value to the house. This change makes sense.”

 

Bella cocked an eyebrow at him. “Are you planning on selling off my inheritance then?”

 

That caught him off guard. “I… no, but-”

 

She laughed. “Kidding, Dad. Jeez.”

 

“Hey, Charlie.” Alice bounded over and sidled up to him. “Check it out. I’ve narrowed it down to two choices, though we can keep looking if you don’t like them, of course.” She had a box in one arm and gestured to Edward who was patiently holding up another. Both boxes held lights--that much Charlie could tell. To him, though, there seemed to be very little difference.

 

“You’d know better than I would. Which would fit in the kitchen you’re leaving me with?” he asked.

 

She visibly struggled to temper an impatient look. “They’d both work, of course. That’s why I’m showing you two options instead of twenty. This isn’t about function. They’ll light the kitchen beautifully. This is the fun part. This is about the aesthetics. One day, you want to be able to lean back against the counter in your awesome new kitchen, look up and think, ‘Man, i just love that light.”

 

Charlie stared at her, bemused.

 

“Alice, normal people don’t spend much time staring at their ceiling,” Edward said.

 

She rolled her eyes and pointed to the box her brother held. “The one Edward has is straight, narrow, and predictable.” She eyed her brother significantly. He just shook his head. “And don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to be said for smooth and steady. It’s a fine way to go.”

 

“But,” Charlie prompted.

 

Alice jiggled the box she held. “This one is just a little sassy.”

 

“Are we still talking about lights?” Bella murmured under her breath.

 

Ignoring her, Alice continued. “There’s a swivel to the mount, see? It draws the eye, and the cone is rounded more oblong. Same function, just a little more fun to look at. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

 

Charlie still had no idea what he was supposed to like or dislike about either set. A light was  light. He wouldn’t have been able to describe a single lamp in the home he’d lived in for nineteen years; he could pretty much guarantee Edward was right. He’d never spend time staring at the ceiling.

 

“Just go with your gut,” Alice said.

 

His gaze locked with hers. He reached out and tapped the box she held without saying a word. She grinned and gave a celebratory little jump. “Great. See, that wasn’t hard.” She put the box in the cart and turned to her brother. “Put that one back. We have glass to look at next.”

 

"Wait,  why are we looking at glass?" Charlie asked.

 

Alice’s expression was the picture of innocence. "We-ll," she said, drawing the word out. "I was just thinking, you know what would be really lovely? Glass cabinets." Charlie's eyebrows shot up, and Alice raised her hands in a peacemaking gesture.  "Hear me out.  They can make even a small kitchen like yours look elegant. I'm going to price it first, and if it's out of our budget, that's it. I'm not going to drive you into the poor house, but if it's reasonable, it would be lovely. Plus-"

 

Then it was Charlie raising his hands to stop her defense. "I trust you. Let's get it done."

 

Alice grinned, pleased. She bounced on her feet and hurried off without further prompting.

 

"You're having fun."

 

Charlie looked at Bella as they followed Alice at a less enthusiastic pace. "What?"

 

"You're having fun with Alice. I've been worried you might think she was annoying. I love Alice, but she can be intense."

 

"She's easy."

 

Bella looked happy. "Maybe this is one of those things that works out even better than expected. I was afraid you'd be lonely when I went to school, but this works. Alice seems better, and you're getting along. Who knew you would do so well with a roommate."

 

"Roommate." The word felt off somehow, incongruous with what Alice was to him. Strictly speaking it fit, so he shrugged. “I like her. She's not you, but she'll do." He winked and Bella smiled.

 

"We should hurry before she gets anymore bright ideas. What did I tell you? You're so screwed."

  
Charlie scoffed. "Yeah, well, what can you do?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Let’s all send jessypt get well soon vibes! She is under the weather but she still looked at this for me. Much heart.
> 
> How we doing out there, folks? I know the updates are shortish. I predict they’ll get longer in the near future. Bwah haha.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hola, cats and kittens. Let’s see what these kids are up to.

By the next weekend, Charlie’s kitchen was a disaster zone. He’d been told to keep out early in the morning, but curiosity got the best of him. When Alice took off on a supply run, he snuck in to take a look.

 

It was as though a tornado had struck. All his dishes were out, stacked in haphazard towers in the far corner and all over the table. Wood, the wood of the cabinets, was scattered about the floor in splintered green, yellow, and brown.

 

“She had a little too much fun ripping the doors off the hinges.”

 

Startled, Charlie swung around to see Esme coming in from the garage. She had a mask on which she pulled down to smile at him.

 

“I thought you went with Alice,” he said.

 

“Well, I tried.” Her eyes were warm and an affectionate smile tugged at her lips. “I was instructed to finish the final coat of stain on the new cabinets. It’s going to take all of today to dry and then the glue for the glass will take another day to set. We’re running behind schedule, so the foreman didn’t think I should be riding shotgun when there was so much work to be done.”

 

“Behind schedule?” Charlie shook his head. “There’s no rush. It’s not like I use the kitchen much anyway.”

 

“Alice runs on her own schedule. She gets very intense about it.”

 

“Bossy. I think the word you’re looking for is bossy,” he said with a smile, so she would know he was teasing.

 

Esme nodded. “She’s so excited about all this, and she wants it to be perfect for you.”

 

“It, uh…” He looked around the space, hands on his hips. “I’m sure it’ll be great.”

 

She clucked. “It’s a mess now, but I guarantee she has a vision in her head that’ll make it look like a kitchen from a magazine. This is good. This is so good for her. I don’t know how to thank you.”

 

“There’s nothing to thank me for.”

 

“No, there is.” She tilted her head. “Alice is an incredible girl, woman. She’s… I don’t know. She carries so much pain with her. Too much. She’s so strong that it’s easy to think she’s fine, but she’s not. I know she’s not. She hasn’t been fine since Jasper’s accident.

 

“Believe it or not, all this is helping. I don’t know if you see it, but I do. She’s always a little… strange. Not in a bad way, of course, but sometimes, even when she’s interacting with you, you can tell her mind is somewhere else. She was getting better at that. When she was with Jasper, she was better at being in the moment, but since the accident, she’s worse than she ever was.” Esme looked up at Charlie and gestured around them. “Today, right now, she’s here. She’s grounded. She’s present in every moment. With me.”

 

Charlie cleared his throat, not sure what to say to that. He hadn’t agreed to this because he was trying to be emotionally sensitive to Alice. She’d asked, and he hadn’t seen a reason to say no. It seemed to make her happy-- enough said. “How are you doing with everything, anyway?” he asked Esme, changing the subject ever so slightly. “I’m sorry I haven’t asked. Alice lost her husband, but you lost your son. I can’t imagine. If it were Bella…” He couldn’t finish. The thought alone made him shudder.

 

Pain flashed through Esme’s eyes, and she looked away. “It’s nice, in a way, to hear you say that. A lot of people don’t quite understand. They don’t think Jasper was ever mine. He was though. Alice and Jasper, they’re my kids. I don’t know if Alice has ever accepted that, and I suppose I’ll never be sure if Jasper did.”

 

She took a deep breath and looked up at Charlie. “I miss him. Every day, I miss him. I don’t know that it’s getting easier so much much as I’m getting used to breathing with perforated lungs.”

 

It wasn’t remotely the same, so Charlie didn’t say so, but he understood what Esme was talking about. After all, once upon a time, he’d lost his wife and baby daughter. Even now, though his daughter was closer to him than ever, the memory of that time made him flinch. “I can’t imagine,” he said instead.

 

Esme reached out to pat his shoulder. “I hope you never have to. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

 

The heavy moment was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. They both looked up as Alice came in, her arms laden with bags. She stopped short when she saw Charlie. Her eyes narrowed, and she set her bags on the floor so she could put her hands on her hips. “Did I not tell you to stay out of here?”

 

Charlie mimicked her posture, adding the head tilt he used when he pulled people over. “Did you know, statistically speaking, cops have problems with authority figures.”

 

They stared at each other with stern expressions. Alice cracked first and grinned. “Well, who am I to boss around an officer of the law? If you insist on being obstinate, you can at least make yourself useful and go get the rest of the bags from the car.”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, winking at her when she glared at the title. He was out the door before she could find the right words to protest.

**~0~**

What had been an amusing quirk quickly became a problem. Alice wouldn’t let go of the idea she was on a deadline. Everyday, when Charlie left for work, she was already awake sanding or drilling or cutting. Most days she had a shift at the salon, but when she came home, she was right back to it.

 

The first few days, Charlie was able to coax her out of the house in the evenings long enough for a meal. but she got more and more reluctant as the week went on. By Thursday, all he got was a distracted, “Go on without me. I’ll get something later.”

 

Saturday Esme was back. She stayed most the day, but when she left, Alice was still in the kitchen. She was still there when Charlie fell asleep in the armchair in front of the TV, and she was still there when he woke up in the small hours of the morning.

 

“Okay, I’m issuing an executive order as chief of police,” Charlie said as he came into the kitchen. “Time to--”

 

He cut off when he saw Alice was sitting on the floor, crying. It wasn’t any ordinary weeping either. This was something more, something very wrong.

 

In a way, Charlie was much better at dealing with a crisis situation than he would have been if Alice were merely crying. And that was very much what this was: a crisis. He knew how to be calm in a stressful situation.

 

His training kicked in as he went to her side. The first order of business was to assess the victim. Alice was in a state, but she wasn’t injured that he could see. She was clawing somewhat mindlessly at what looked like a chunk of one of the lower cabinets, trying to fit a broken hinge to the splintered side. She was sobbing. It was a soft but hysterical sound.

 

Charlie knelt down in front of her, calling her name.

 

“I broke it,” she said. She didn’t look at him. “I broke it. I broke it.”

 

The way she kept grabbing at the wood made his stomach twist. She didn’t look to be hurt, but that could change really quick with how rough she was being. “Alice.” He caught her by the wrists, stilling her hands. “Hey. Hey, listen to me. Look at me.”

 

She raised her eyes to him, but they were wide and unfocused. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.” Her voice was tremulous and thin as she spoke in a ramble. “My hands were shaking, and I drilled a hole. I missed. I tried to fix it. I tried, but a piece broke off. It’s broken.”

 

“Hey, shhh. Shh.” Charlie sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. She was trembling. Her skin was cool to the touch. He released her long enough to shrug out of his robe and wrap it around her shoulders. He rubbed his hand up and down her arm, trying to warm her. “It’s okay. It’s fine. Just breathe. Calm down.”

 

She turned her face into his neck and cried quietly. He could feel her tears hot against his skin. Minutes passed but she eventually calmed. Her tears and the subsequent hiccups subsided, and she raised her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

 

When she made a move to wipe at her eyes, he caught her by the arm. “Hold on. You might have splinters. You don’t want to scratch your own eyes out.” He cupped her face, wiping away her tears with the pads of his thumbs.

 

Alice blinked, and Charlie was suddenly aware of how close she was and that his touch was more intimate than was probably appropriate. He dropped his hands and scooted a small distance away from her. “Try again,” he said to distract himself from the moment of discomfort. “What happened?”

 

“Um. I was drilling. I mean.” She sniffled. “I was screwing in the hinge. So simple. I’ve done it a bunch of times with the other doors, but I couldn’t hold the drill steady. I messed everything up.”

 

“Oh, I think that’s a slight exaggeration,” he said, glancing around at the mostly finished cabinets above them. He dropped his gaze to eye her. “When was the last time you ate anything?”

 

Alice scrunched her nose. “Uh?”

 

“Uh huh. That’s what I thought.” He stood up, and helped her to her feet. “Sit down at the table and see if you have any splinters. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

 

“You don’t have to do that.”

 

He raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Turkey or ham?”

 

She sighed but she smiled. “Both.”

 

“Good girl.”

 

The next few minutes passed in companionable silence. Charlie cleared a space on the counter and assembled sandwiches while Alice examined her hands. When she’d cleared herself as fit for duty, she got up and heated two mugs of milk for hot chocolate.

 

As Charlie set two plates showing off his impressive sandwich making skills on the table, Alice poured a generous shot of whiskey into each of their mugs. Charlie smirked, but he didn’t argue.

 

As they sat down to eat, he was distracted for a time, deep in thought about what Alice’s fit had truly been about--people got upset over inconsequential things all the time didn’t they--and if he should do anything else for her. Tell her mother perhaps?

 

When he realized too many minutes of silence had gone by to be polite, he turned back only to find Alice just as distracted as he’d been. She was staring at her hand, and when he followed her gaze, he could see she was fixated on a drop of blood that had welled up from a small cut just below her knuckle. In all fairness, it was a strangely beautiful, if macabre sight. The drop was perfectly spherical, its crimson shade a stark, almost lovely, contrast on her skin.

 

Charlie put his sandwich down. An uncomfortable, eerie feeling had begun to curl and twist in his gut, the touch of it as cold as ice.

 

His hand darted out with a sharpness that caught them both by surprise. He covered the droplet with a napkin. Alice gasped, but her eyes remained stuck to the spot. The napkin, a white paper napkin, blossomed a blood red flower at its center. Charlie folded the napkin, obscuring the blood once and for all, and Alice finally looked up. “I, uh… Thanks.”

 

“Don’t mention it,” he said, pulling back.

 

She took a tentative if awkward bite of her sandwich and cleared her throat. Then she nodded at the cabinet. “I’m sorry about that. Really.”

 

“It’s not a big deal.”

 

“There are holes in the wood,” she said with a dissatisfied scowl.

 

“Well, you’re the expert here, but I’d venture to guess you’re not the first person to ever punch holes where they don’t belong. It’s fixable, isn’t it?”

 

“It is, but I need something from not-Forks.”

 

“No problem. We can go as far as Seattle if you need. It’s Sunday.”

 

Alice cocked her head. “I thought you were going fishing.”

 

He shrugged. “The fish will be there next week.”

 

“We-ll,” she said, drawing out the word. “If it’s really no trouble, we don’t have to go anywhere near Seattle. Port Angeles will do.”

 

Charlie nodded. “Then it’s settled.” He looked around his kitchen and smiled. “Holes aside… this all looks really good so far.”

 

She brightened noticeably and sat up straighter. “You’re beginning to see what I’m doing here?”

 

“You know me. I don’t have the eye for the finer things, but I think it’s really great.”

  
Her grin was radiant, and her eyes, dulled before, sparked over her mug of chocolate. “Thanks, Charlie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Mew! Many thanks to my jessypt. I love her notes. Heheh.
> 
> How we doing out there, folks? Personally, I’m still not over getting up at 6:20 to go to work. PAH.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Happy Saturday!

Charlie was drunk.

 

He was the kind of guy who enjoyed beer with his dinner and another when he watched TV. When he was out fishing with his friends, he drank enough to get a healthy buzz going. But Charlie didn’t like being drunk.

 

Drunk Charlie was one morose bastard. When he got drunk, he tended to dwell on things that didn’t matter, things he couldn’t help. Drunk Charlie reopened the wounds that his wife had left when she breezed out the door, taking their one-year-old daughter with her. The memories still hurt, like unexpected shards of broken glass hiding in the carpet fibers, waiting to cut deep.

 

All these years later and Renee had been the only woman he ever loved. Add to that the time with his daughter, everything he missed… From the age of one to seventeen, he’d only seen Bella for two weeks a year. It had never been enough. It would never be enough. Those years were gone, and his baby had learned to walk, talk, ride a bike, and everything in between without him.

 

Charlie slammed the empty tumbler of whiskey down on the table with a little more force than he’d intended. He licked his lips. They were numb.

 

What was it about having so much alcohol in his system that made it possible for him to feel every day, every month, every year he’d spent alone here? He’d bought this house for his family, and his wife had hated it. Bella had hated it too; As soon as she was old enough she begged him to take her to California instead.

 

His house, and when he was this low, he often thought he’d die here one day alone.

 

The sound of a door opening upstairs broke through his clouded thoughts. Not so alone after all, he reminded himself. At least for now.

 

He listened for a moment and heard Alice’s light step on the stairs. He sat up straight and coughed into his hand, trying to clear his head. When she appeared in the doorway he attempted a smile. From the way she cocked her head and stared at him, he didn’t succeed.

 

Alice walked over to the kitchen cabinet. “How many have you had?”

 

“Uh, just the one,” Charlie said, clearing his throat.

 

Alice looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

 

“Two. And a half,” Charlie amended.

 

She took two tumblers down, filled them with ice, and put them in front of Charlie as she sat down across from him. “Well, sounds like my kind of party, and I have to catch up.”

 

That had a sobering effect. Charlie raised his eyes to hers. She was staring back with a straight face devoid of any trace of mirth. She looked tired and much older than her…

 

“Oh, hell. It’s your birthday,” he said, realizing it was past midnight.

 

She smiled. It made her look even more tired. “And my anniversary.”

 

He filled both of her tumblers and topped off his. She downed the first one without stopping and Charlie gaped.

 

“What?” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

 

“I, uh… nothing.”

 

She lifted the second tumbler and drank at a more reserved pace. When she set it down, half the drink was gone. She sat back, smacking her lips. Charlie sipped at his own drink and waited. It was a heavy silence but not uncomfortable.

 

Alice closed her eyes and let out her breath in a long, slow gust. “He would have already woken me up. Actually, he probably would have said happy birthday at nine because it was already midnight in New York. He would have kissed me senseless at nine on the dot.”

 

She downed the last of her second glass and poured herself a third. “So what’s your excuse?” she asked.

 

“It’s… It’s nothing. Nothing I should be complaining about in front of you.”

 

Again, she arched a single eyebrow, her dull eyes fixed on him. “Don’t do that. I haven’t cornered the market on pain. My fucked up life doesn’t negate yours. I don’t care how insignificant it is; it’s important because it affects you.” She punctuates her mild tirade by taking a pull of whiskey. “Now tell.”

 

He was just drunk enough to be honest. “A lot of people in this town think I’m another deadbeat dad who was relieved to get out of parenting. Otherwise I would have fought for Bella, right? Or gone after Renee?” He sipped his whiskey and let the burn eat away at the lump in his throat. “My parents were sick. Both of them. Dying sick. They needed a lot of care, and I’m an only child.”

 

This time both of her eyebrows shot up. “Renee left you and took your baby while both of your parents were dying?”

 

“Yeah. She did at that.”

 

Alice made a face as though she’d bitten into rancid meat. “What an asshole.”

 

Charlie opened his mouth to defend Renee as he always did. After all these years, he understood why Renee left. It had been the right decision for her and most days, he couldn’t begrudge her that. Most days.

 

Tonight he snapped his mouth shut and nodded. “Yeah,” he said in agreement, and he took another drink.

 

Alice took another long drink and set it down. She tilted the glass back and forth between her palms and looked at the tabletop, her shoulders slumped. “When I woke up tonight, alone, I wanted him here with me so badly. Of course I did. But…”

 

“But,” he prompted when she didn’t continue.

 

With her eyes closed, she took a long drink, set it down, and breathed deeply, her mouth open, her lips shining from the alcohol. “Tonight, just for a second, instead of wishing it was him, I wished someone was there with me. I miss the touches. I want to be touched again. I want to wake up in someone’s arms. and I know it can’t be him. It can never be him, and I still want it.” She covered her face with her hands. “It’s terrible.”

 

“It’s hope,” he said, only too familiar with that sense of longing.

 

“Hope feels terrible.”

 

Charlie nodded. “Yeah. I get that too.” He paused long enough to finish his third drink. “It’s not, though. Terrible to hope. It’s terrible that he didn’t live, but it’s not terrible that you did.”

 

Her sigh was heavy. Charlie had no idea what to say. It didn’t help that he’d gotten to that point where he could hear the beat of his heart between his ears. It made it hard to concentrate. This was far too deep a conversation to have when he’d drunk as much as he did.

 

Before he could say anything, Alice giggled. It was such an incongruous sound, Charlie looked up too quickly. He regretted it. He put his hand to his forehead, trying to stop the spinning. “What?” he asked at her continued mirth.

 

“I’m sorry. It’s just the look on your face.” She furrowed her brow and stuck out her lower lip in imitation of what Charlie thought looked more like a confused baboon.

 

He made an effort to suck in his lip. “I’m not making that face.”

 

“You so are.” She made the face again, worse this time.

 

“Oh, come on. I think you’re exaggerating.”

 

But Charlie couldn’t be too perturbed. The tense atmosphere had broken, and good-humored drunkenness took over. They both slipped into lighter conversation with their typical ease. They sipped at their drinks, but the damage was done. Eventually, their conversation devolved into nonsensical ridiculousness.

 

“Charlie,” Alice said between titters. “We are so very drunk.”

 

“That’s an astute observation if ever I heard one.” He pushed to his feet and found himself much more unsteady than he had been even a half hour before. He slapped his palms down on the table, trying to gauge how well he could stand upright. “We should, uh…” He snapped his fingers. Simple words escaped him. “Lie down.”

 

“Oh, yes. Lying down sounds fabulous.” Alice got to her feet, or she tried to, anyway. She swayed in place. “Whoa.”

 

Charlie was quick to move to her side, intent on keeping her upright. The problem with that plan was he was anything but steady. They ended up clinging to each other for dear life, their feet shuffling and hands gripping shirts and arms until they were relatively stable. They looked at each other and laughed.

 

“Come on,” Charlie said, wrapping his arm around her waist. She put her arm around his torso, and they headed out of the kitchen, headed for the stairs.

 

When they reached the bottom, Charlie paused. As a cop, he was trained to be analytical. He looked up the stairs and considered how many times he’d stumbled in the short walk from the kitchen. He glanced at Alice who looked back at him, shaking her head and grinning. “You know, we’re all going to die someday, but I’d prefer not to be in the running for a Darwin Award.”

 

“Couch?” he asked.

 

“Couch.”

 

It didn’t occur to Charlie to let her go as they stumbled to the living room. The fact they were still connected didn’t strike him as problematic until he’d sat, pulling her down beside him. He blinked, befuddled as to what he was supposed to do next. Technically Alice would fit better on the loveseat, but it seemed like a rude thing to suggest.

 

Before he could work out his next move, Alice splayed her hands on his chest and pushed gently. It was the most natural thing in the world to lay back, bring her horizontal with him. Her weight was solid and warm--nice. They shifted until they found a comfortable position. Charlie pressed his back against the couch and Alice tucked herself tight against his side, facing him. There wasn’t an inch of breathing room between them.

 

The dizzy spin of his head wasn’t nearly as bad when his eyes were focused on her pretty face.

 

Alice sighed. “Tomorrow...today is going to suck.”

 

He rubbed her back. “I know.”

 

She raised her hand and traced the shape of his moustache, smoothing it out. The act brought her small smile back. “Tonight didn’t suck as much as it should have.” She brushed his cheek with her lips. “Thanks, Charlie.”

 

He huffed. “Thank Mr. Jameson. Every once in a while, he makes things a little easier,” he murmured.

 

She hummed. Her eyelashes fluttered. “Thanks, Mr. Jameson.” Her words ran together. Sleep was taking her quickly.

 

Sure enough, only a few moments later her eyes closed and her breath evened out. He was tired too. Beyond tired. Drunken tired. His eyelids were made of ten pound weights, but he struggled to keep them open just a few minutes longer.

 

This was nice. This wasn’t the way these kinds of nights ended for him. He raised a tentative hand. His fingers hovered over her skin.

 

He couldn’t ignore that this was more than just nice. It had to be his imagination, but he would swear his cheek tingled where she’d kissed him. He liked the way her body fit against him. He liked that she seemed peaceful and content in his arms. He liked it much more than he should.

 

He cupped her cheek with the lightest of touches. She responded in an instant, even in her sleep. She tilted her head, a soft whimper on her lips. He drew his fingers down and dropped his hand, resting it lightly on her side.

 

What was happening here?

 

Tonight was simple enough to explain. His loneliness was always amplified when he drank. She’d said she missed being touched. That was all there was to it.

 

He let his eyes close.

**~0~**

Alice’s birthday was never going to be a good day.

 

It had taken a bit of convincing on Esme’s part to get Alice to agree to a get together at all. Personally, Charlie was on Alice’s side. Maybe it was a little selfish. When she attempted to shoot down her mother’s plan, Esme was clearly hurt. Alice’s family and friends wanted to celebrate her. To say no would disappoint the people who loved her.

 

In Charlie’s estimation, birthdays should have been the one day a year it was okay to be unequivocally selfish, but Alice acquiesced.

 

She spent the late morning and early afternoon at the cemetery, alone by request. Later that afternoon everyone gathered at the Cullen house. All Alice’s foster-family was there along with Rosalie, Emmett’s fiance, Bella, and Charlie.

 

It was one of those quietly miserable affairs where everyone smiled pretty and pretended they were having a good time. No one was trying as hard as Alice. She was trying so hard to be the bubbly, bright person her family missed.

 

Maybe it was chance, but Charlie always caught it when she ducked out of sight into a quiet room. He saw the way she slumped against the wall as though standing upright was too much. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep, steeling herself before she went out to face her family again.

 

He was tired just watching her.

 

When day edged into night, Charlie offered up an out. “I think I’m calling it a night.”

 

Alice jumped to pick up the line he threw out. “You know, I’ve had a little too much to drink. I have work tomorrow. I think I’ll ride back with Charlie.” She looked at him. “If that’s okay.”

 

There was a general cry of displeasure, but the family seemed to recognize Alice needed a break. They helped her take her gifts to Charlie’s truck. She was hugged and kissed and reminded she was loved.

 

“You know you can stay, don’t you?” Charlie heard Carlisle ask.

 

“We’d love to have you back home,” Esme said.

 

Alice hugged them both tightly. “I know. I can’t. Not yet.”

 

She was quiet on the drive home. Charlie was somewhat surprised when, instead of heading up to her room as he expected, she sat in the living room.

 

Charlie poured them both a drink--just enough to take the edge off. He didn’t want to start a bad habit. He walked back to the living room, sitting across from her on the loveseat. She huffed when he handed her the drink.

 

“Thank you, Mr. Jameson,” she said and she tossed the whole thing back. She rested her head on the back of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, quiet for another handful of minutes before she finally found her voice again. “Charlie?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“I’m not overstaying my welcome, am I?”

 

“What?”

 

“I’ve been here for months.” Her voice shook the slightest bit. “It’s not right.”

 

“It’s not wrong. You’re fine, Alice.”

 

She gave a short laugh. “I’m not. I’m trying, but I’m not.” She didn’t sound upset, just tired.

 

Charlie stared down at his drink. “It’s supposed to get better.”

 

“It is. Sometimes it’s so much better.” Her lower lip trembled, and she closed her eyes as a tear slipped down her cheek. She wasn’t crying. Not really. “Sometimes that’s even worse.

 

“You’re right. I know you’re right. It does get better. And that’s half the problem. It gets better, and that makes it so much worse. My mother died, but that got better. My dad and my stepmother… they were good to me for a while. Then they weren’t, but that got better. They gave me Cynthia. I have a baby sister named Cynthia. Did you know that? God, I loved her. She was such a sweet baby, and she loved me. Then I remembered what my father did, and it got bad again, and Cynthia wasn’t allowed to love me.

 

“But then the Cullens took me. And then there was Jasper.” Her voice broke and another tear fell down her cheek. “It got better than better. It got so, so good.” She raised her head to look at him. “So what happens if it does get better again?” Her breath hitched. “I don’t want to know what I lose next time.”

 

Charlie moved to sit beside her on the couch. He didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. He only lifted his arm, and Alice scooted under it. She laid her head on his chest. He wrapped his arm tight around her, and they sat in silence until her breaths evened out again.

 

She sniffled and picked up the hand he’d rested on his lap. She played with his fingers as she spoke again. “It’s hard, you know, and it’s all the stupid things. Like today. I mean, I know they were trying to be discreet, but they’re young and in love.”

 

“Who’s that?”

 

“Edward and Bella. They tried to keep it on the D.L. but I saw them sneak away to make out.” She looked up at him with a grimace. “Sorry, Charlie.”

 

Charlie chuffed. “My daughter is staying with your brother instead of here at her home. I’m a cop, not an idiot. I know what that means.”

 

She smiled and laid her head back on his chest. For a few more minutes there was only the feel of her soft fingers bending and flexing his. Then she stroked along his pointer finger. Slowly, her hand moved down until they were palm to palm. Slowly, she twined their fingers together.

 

Charlie was a steady kind of man. He believed in ration and order. He believed in fact and truth.

 

The fact was he wanted nothing more than to tell this wounded woman that she’d reached her quota of suffering and the rest of her life was coming up roses. The truth was anything could still happen to her. She could, she likely would, find new ways to hurt.

 

Alice’s hand went slack in his and her breath felt hot and even against his neck. It was the second night in a row--dangerously close to habit.

 

There was another fact. Alice stirred something in him he didn’t want to explain. It wasn’t rational or orderly, but it was there. That was the truth. For as little good as it would do either of them, it existed.

 

He lingered as long as he could without thinking, then he got carefully to his feet, lifting her with him. She stirred with a gasp, and her arms went around his neck. “Don’t wake up,” he whispered. “I got you.”

  
She blinked at him in the dim light and closed her eyes again, trusting he would take care of her.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to baburella and my lovely jessypt.
> 
> And you guys. You guys make me happy.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Not the easiest chapter, I’d imagine. *holds your hand*

The week after Alice’s birthday went from bad to worse. Charlie had always known it would. Everyone had known that. He’d discussed it with Carlisle and Esme, but what could he do? What could any of them do but wait?

 

Five days after Alice’s birthday was Jasper’s birthday. This time, there was no taking anyone else’s feelings into consideration. She was already awake when Charlie left for work, and she hadn’t acknowledged him further than a nod when he said good morning. Esme reported later that to the best of her knowledge, Alice spent the entire day at the cemetery. When Esme and Carlisle showed up to pay their respects, she gave them about twenty minutes--during which she spoke not a word--before she asked them to please just leave.

 

After that she had good and bad days. Some days she could smile and joke. Other days her eyes were haunted, and he was lucky to get two or three words out of her at a time. She let Emmett take her out to dinner one night, but turned Carlisle down a few days later. The kitchen was finished, and she talked to Charlie about starting another project. The garage was high on her list, but even after he agreed, she didn’t throw herself headlong into the project like she had before. She started lists of supplies but never finished them. She would talk about going to Seattle or Port Angeles on the weekend, but then she would sleep until the afternoon. More than once he heard her rescheduling a client because she had never made it out of bed that day.

 

She functioned. She survived. She continuously refused anyone’s offer to talk.

 

What could they do?

 

Weeks passed in a strange limbo, and Alice again was a ghost in his house.

 

Then, one night, everything changed.

 

Charlie had dozed off in front of the T.V. so he was groggy when he woke and dragged himself to his feet. He cocked an ear and listened. It had become his habit to check on Alice by whatever means necessary. More often than not these days, it meant listening to hear her walking around in her room.

 

The house was silent, and he hoped that meant she was getting some sleep.

 

He got up, stretched, and headed for his own room, his own bed. When he got to the top of the stairs, Charlie hesitated. He looked at Alice’s closed bedroom door and the faint light that shone beneath it, thinking about the merits of knocking. It was late, for one thing, and for another, she’d made it clear repeatedly how much she didn’t want to be bothered. He started to turn away. Stopped. Stared at the wood again as though he could make it open with sheer willpower alone.

 

There was something to be said about cops and hunches. It was an unnamed, uncommon emotion. It was a paranoia that made his skin crawl and his stomach twist, an uneasiness that made his heart race. It was the voice in his head that said screw privacy; something was wrong.

 

It didn’t take a psychiatrist to diagnose her with depression. It didn’t take a genius to understand the weight of everything that had happened to her. She’d said herself before, she already knew it would get better, that she could survive. Surviving and thriving meant she could lose even more the next time around. After the devastation she’d been through, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she ended it, but that didn’t mean he was going to sit by and let it happen either.

 

Charlie knocked on her door. “Alice?” There wasn’t any answer, and Charlie’s heart pounded hard enough he heard it between his ears. He knocked again--a policeman’s knock. “Alice.” He waited. No answer. “Alice, I’m coming in to check on you.”

 

The room was dark save for a small bedside lamp, but he saw her right away. She was sitting on the floor, back against the bed. Her head was tilted backward, resting on the mattress. But what made Charlie run to her side was the fact her thigh was streaked with rivulets of blood.

 

As he dropped to his knees at her side, he got the whole picture. She was wearing short shorts so her wound--wounds--were easily visible. There were three of them. Three neat, straight lines, and even without seeing the collection of faded scars that littered her legs, he understood with certainty exactly what had happened. Sure enough, she still held a bloody razorblade in one trembling hand.

 

“Alice,” he said, his voice soft and calm, completely belying the horror he felt. He was sickened, not by her actions but by the strength of her pain. “Alice.” Her eyes were unfocused and her face was tear streaked but her expression was calm. Eerily calm. Her breaths were shallow. Charlie took her face in his hands. He couldn’t smell alcohol on her breath. “Alice, look at me. I need you to tell me if you took anything.”

 

Slowly, achingly slowly, her eyes found his. She blinked.

 

“Did you take anything?” he asked again.

 

She sniffled and shook her head minutely.

 

“Okay. That’s good.” He brushed her hair back, the motion tender. She was in a daze, and he understood that place only too well. “That’s really good, sweetheart. We’re going to get you cleaned up, okay?”

 

Alice didn’t answer, but Charlie didn’t expect her too. He brushed his hand down her arm and took the razor from her fingers. Her eyes followed it, and he understood that too--how fascinating it could be to see the way blood stained metal and skin. He set the blade on the nightstand and lifted her. She sagged against him, as though she didn’t have the energy to keep herself upright, but she looped her arms around his neck.

 

He carried her to the bathroom and set her on the counter. Inside he was in turmoil, but his hands were steady as he wiped the blood from her leg. The wounds were deep. Not deep enough to stitch, but they would scar. What broke his heart the most were the old scars, the marks that had once looked exactly like the red, raw wounds. He looked at them and wondered when and why.

 

Alice’s life story was written on her skin, her pain carved into her flesh. Each of the marks--and there were so many, too many--was a souvenir of a time when the pain of a razor flaying open her skin was the only distraction from the pain she felt in the depths of her soul. Physical pain was so much easier to cope with than wounds of the heart.

 

“You can tell me I’m a freak.” Charlie’s heart skipped a beat when she spoke, breaking the long, heavy silence between them. Her voice was thin--a barely there whisper. “I know I’m a freak.”

 

He lifted his eyes to hers briefly. They were focused but dull--lifeless and defeated. He looked back down to her leg, patting it dry, watching the blood well up fresh from the cuts. “Why would I do something like that?”

 

“My stepmother used to tell me that.”

 

“Yeah, well. Your stepmother is a bitch.” He wrapped one arm around her and hugged her as he pressed the ran the peroxide-laden cottonball over the fresh wound. Hugging her seemed like the right thing to do. There was obviously something wrong, and the peroxide had to sting like a sonovabitch; she deserved a little comfort. She hissed in pain and turned her face against his chest. He noticed too late he was brushing his fingers along her side. He would have stopped, but he felt the tension drain from her shoulders.

 

She sniffled. “I did it all to myself, you know. All of that.” She lifted her head and pulled the sleeve of her shirt up to reveal the scars hidden there. “All of this.”

 

Charlie didn’t say anything at first, concentrating instead on selecting the right sized bandage and covering up the angry red marks. Eventually, though, even that was done, and an admission balanced on the tip of his tongue. He hesitated. He had a secret. He had a secret that had the potential of making her feel like less of a freak, but what would that secret cost him? His throat was tight and a thrill of fear made his hair stand on end, but the aura of defeat that radiated from Alice made his decision for him. He cleared his throat and stepped away from her. She kept staring down at the the floor, her shoulders slumped down even further, but she finally raised her eyes when she heard the rustle of his shirt coming off. Breathing hard, he turned to the side so she could see.

 

The scars on his shoulders weren’t nearly as vivid as hers. They were old. Very old. She gasped, and then it was him who couldn’t lift his eyes from the floor. He’d never shown anybody these scars before. The few times he’d been with a woman, he’d kept his shirt on.

 

When he felt the brush of her fingertips against his shoulder, he started. Ugly was an emotion, and when Charlie even thought of those scars, it was all he could feel. So the idea anyone could touch them, touch him, was a shock. It was like watching someone lovingly pet a slug.

 

And there was something loving about the way her fingertips skimmed across his skin. There was a reverence there, a tenderness. Her eyes, no longer quite so dull, were warm with empathy. She traced the scars one by one. “Why?” she asked with the same note of quiet despair with which someone might ask why there were homeless people or abandoned puppies.

 

Why did bad things happen to good people?

 

Charlie found it difficult to speak around the lump in his throat. It was painful to swallow, but after a few tries he managed it. “My wife had left me. I knew I was going to miss all the important moments in my daughter’s life, that I was going to seem like a deadbeat dad to her. I thought it was inevitable that Bella would hate me. My parents were dying, and I was a disappointment to them.” He shrugged. “It was the only thing that made sense then.”

 

The words sounded stupid, and he felt stupid for feeling so damn sorry for himself. He was the kind of man who believed he was in charge of his own destiny, and that happiness was a choice. And though he never would have thought of her as pathetic for taking the same route, he felt pathetic.

 

Alice sat up straighter and pressed her lips to his shoulder, to his scars. He felt the hot splash of a tear against his skin. She wrapped her arms around his waist, holding him, and he let his hand curl around her. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he closed his eyes, breathing easier for the first time in minutes.

 

After a few quiet moments, he propped his finger beneath her chin to tilt her head up. His intention was to ask her if she could sleep now, but the words died on his lips when their eyes met.

 

Maybe it struck him right then that he had never been so naked in front of another human being before. He had let her see something no one else ever had, and she hadn’t rejected him. More than that, she’d understood. He’d given her that piece of himself so she wouldn’t feel alone and only then realized it meant he wasn’t alone either. If she was a freak, they were freaks together.

 

Maybe it was that moment of profound connection, or maybe it was the light he saw in her eyes. It was dim and distant, but it was there again, alive and warm. Maybe it was the way she looked at him or maybe it was the way the brush of her fingers along his bare back sent shivers down his spine.

 

Whatever the explanation, the fact of the matter was in that instant, something changed, and it was so tangible Charlie felt it happen. It wasn’t a thought; it was a knowledge.

 

The first kiss was a surprise. In retrospect, he would never know which of them moved first. All he knew was one second he was looking at her, taking in her beauty and strength and pain, and the next his eyes were closed and the feel of her was all he knew. Her lips were soft, her taste salty from too many tears. He pulled back, but only for an instant before they were kissing again. He made no conscious decision to do it. It was as though he drew her in as he drew in a new breath. Her hands pressed against his back, pushing him closer, and he moved his fingers from her chin to cup around the back of her neck.

 

They kissed slow, as though neither quite knew what was going on, if this was really happening, but firm because whatever was happening, this was good. Better than feeling good, it felt right, and when things had been so wrong for so long, right was a giddy relief. Charlie was greedy for it, and he took what he could. Her tongue pressed against his lips, and he opened himself to her kiss, let their tongues press and stroke.

 

He hardly realized he’d pulled her off the counter until her legs were wrapped around him, her weight in his arms.

 

Eventually thought caught up with him. There was a lot he could have done then. There was a lot he wanted to do and too much to think about. He sighed when their lips parted, and she whimpered. For a minute, they breathed. Charlie pressed soft kisses to her chin and Alice scratched her fingers through his hair. She brushed her lips once again with his and broke the silence. "Stay with me tonight. Please. I just want to be warm tonight."

 

He nodded, and with her still wrapped around him, he took her not to her room but to his. He wrapped the blankets around them and cupped her cheek, running his thumb over her lips. She slotted her leg between his, seeking, as she'd asked, warmth. Comfort. She kissed him once, tucked her head under his chin, and fell asleep.

 

Charlie, for once not wanting to think at all if only for a few hours, promptly followed her.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to barburella and many, many, many thanks to jessypt and her flails. Her flails make my life.
> 
> How are we out there, friends?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Happy Birthday, America! Here, have some Charlie/Alice?

Something was tickling Charlie’s moustache.

He was mostly asleep still, his thoughts still wrapped up in cottony wisps of not-quite-consciousness. But he was aware of the tickling sensation along the bristles of his moustache. He wrinkled his nose, trying to soothe the itch, and he heard a pleasant little laugh.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Alice blinking at him, squinting as though her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the brightness of the morning yet. The sight confused him until he remembered the night before. He remembered why he was sleeping shirtless for the first time since he was nineteen years old, and why this young woman was in bed with him.

As though she had caught on to his line of thinking, Alice sighed. She smoothed a thumb over his moustache once more before she snuggled up against him, resting her head on his chest. He only hesitated a moment before he brought his hands up, resting one against her back and the other on her arm. Her skin was so soft. 

Her fingers traced idle patterns against his arm starting at the elbow. The light caress sent shivers down his spine. It had been longer than he could remember since anyone had touched him like this. He’d had a few women on a few different nights, but this wasn’t the same thing at all. Alice’s touch was intimate.

It was strange. He’d forgotten how his skin seemed more sensitive when he was touched like this, so familiarly. He wasn’t ticklish by nature, except for his belly and the soles of his feet, but her light caress made him want to laugh. He bit the inside of his lip. He felt foolish; that wasn’t ever comfortable for a guy like him, but it was a giddy kind of foolish. 

Conflicted. That’s what he felt. Especially when her fingertips moved up to trace the lines they both knew where there.

Every nerve ending still reacted to her touch, but Charlie didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

“How did you stop?” Alice asked after a heavy moment.

The memory was hard, even with a solid decade and a half perspective. “I was a rookie cop, and we were at a crime scene. This is Forks. Violent crime scenes don’t happen very often, but this perp jumps out at us. Me and Officer Marks. He had a knife. He jumped at me, and afterward, I couldn’t figure why Marks thought I needed to go to the hospital.” He was tapping his fingers against her back in a rhythm he couldn’t name, nervous and self-conscious even though he knew she wasn’t going to judge him. “Anyway, come to figure out my shoulder was soaked through with blood. He thought I’d been stabbed. I let him think it.”

“So what happened?” she prompted when he lapsed into silence. Her fingers were exploring the underside of his chin. The touch helped.

“I didn’t see how I could get out of going to hospital. I knew I wasn’t stabbed, but how else was I going to explain the blood? The nurse took one look at me and figured out what happened. She helped me come up with a story. I’d cut myself accidentally and the struggle had reopened that wound. It was the truth except for the accidental part. In exchange, though, she asked me to consider counseling.”

“And you did.”

“I did. I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of. I thought I was just being an idiot and all I had to do was quit feeling so damn sorry for myself. Hell, if you want to know the truth, looking back, I still feel that way sometimes.” Often enough that he hadn’t ever told a living soul about it. “But it helped.”

She didn’t speak at that, but as usual the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was difficult to feel ugly or stupid when her fingers were combing through his chest hair. He nuzzled the top of her head with the tip of his nose. 

It took a few minutes for him to realize she was shaking. He was confused at first until he realized she must have been trying to work up the nerve to talk about her own scars. It made sense. His admission was a perfect segue. Tit for tat. One sordid story for another. He’d opened up to give her permission to do the same, but that didn’t make it easy.

He cupped her cheek, encouraging her to lift her head so he could comfort her. The instant she lifted her head, her eyes so open and vulnerable as their gaze met, he wanted to kiss her again. It was the most natural thing in the world to want to kiss her. There were probably a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t, but those reasons seemed too distant to care about. What he cared about was making Alice feel better, safer. Charlie had never been good with words. He was an actions kind of man, and in that moment, he couldn’t think of a better way to convey everything he wanted to tell her than to kiss her.

So he did.

He wrapped his arms tighter around her because last night she’d asked for warmth, and he had no doubt the chill of a wounded soul hadn’t left her. His first kiss was sweet and fleeting, a gentle nudge to let her know he cared so much for her. And then his kiss was firmer. He closed his eyes, rubbing her cheek with his thumb and hoping she understood. He was in awe with her. He saw beauty where she saw ugliness and strength where she saw weakness.

Alice made a noise that was at once a whimper and a sigh. She returned his kisses with tentative touches of her own, uncertain but not unwilling. Affection, he understood, was difficult to accept when your self-esteem had been pulverized. But kiss by kiss she began to regain her natural confidence, and he felt it when she relaxed again.

Good god how he felt it.

He had absently trapped her hand against his chest so he could feel the warmth of her palm on his skin. She tilted her head, and her tongue pressed against his lips. He opened his mouth to her, shuddering with the jolt of electricity that passed between them. 

She was a conundrum, this woman. The dainty, well-manicured sweetheart who could wield power tools and eagerly instigated morning breath kisses. She made no sense at all and yet he thought he understood. It wasn’t something he could have explained; he simply knew her. And she knew him. With every kiss it was clearer, this knowledge he’d stumbled on the night before.

It was a powerful thing that would have knocked him right on his ass if he weren’t already horizontal. But before he could acclimate to the intensity of the connection between them, she turned the heat up from smolder to inferno. All at once Charlie found himself pinned on his back with Alice straddling him, sitting up right over the one thing he’d been trying to keep from her.

He gasped, breaking their kiss, and pulled away instinctively, though with her on top of him like that, it only made things worse. And what he thought he was running from he didn’t know. She’d been pressed up against his body, wiggling and little and hot beneath his hands. His arousal wasn’t exactly a surprise. What was a surprise was the purposeful way she moved over him. 

“Alice,” he said, the word a groan as he gripped her hips. 

Her hands rested on his chest. Her cheeks were tinted pink, her mouth open with breathlessness. She licked her lips before she spoke. “Whatever you’re going to say, I think you should know I’ve wanted this for a while now.”

Charlie’s breath caught in his throat, and he groaned, the sound coming out strangled as he banged his head against the pillow. “Christ,” he murmured, but his hands were already tracing the edge of her shirt, slipping beneath the fabric to press against her skin. It was difficult to think around the way his heart was suddenly thudding hard and fast against his chest, filling the space between his ears with the wet rush of blood. He looked up at her, at the naked desire in her eyes. Alice never apologized for what she felt or what she wanted.

She wanted him, and that sent all the blood in his head south. Of course he’d wanted this. He’d wanted this for a while now, but he’d never once let himself entertain the fact he could have it. The idea made his head spin. The intensity of the connection they shared with a kiss had him breathless and giddy as all get out. What would this do to him?

He wanted her, and again he found he was better able to communicate with actions rather than words. His hands under her shirt, he pressed his hands to her back, urging her down so he could kiss her again. This was his acquiescence. His hungry kisses were kindling to the fire he could have doused. His hands pushed up along her stomach until he could curl his fingers around the curve of her breasts.

It would have been easy to say he gave in because any man would have. It had been a long time since he’d been with anyone, and how could he have denied a willing, beautiful woman who was already on top of him. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t succombed before.   
When he got lonely enough, when it had been too long since anyone had touched him or even stopped to see him--not the chief-of-police of Forks, but him--he’d let himself be seduced.

But this wasn’t about that. 

When she pulled her shirt off his touch was slow and reverent. He pulled her down, back into his arms and rolled them onto their sides. Her breath fell in erratic pants, hot on his skin. She reached between them to tug on his pants and he let her pull them down, kicking them away as he pushed her onto her back.

He had to lean over her to rummage in the nightstand drawer, and she surprised him by licking a line across his chest. He gasped and started, almost falling on her as he jerked back. She giggled beneath him, and her hand skimmed his belly, teasing. Charlie managed to grab what he was looking for in the drawer before he collapsed back onto his side. He caught her hands in his.

He kissed her to distract her, and her giggle died against his lips, fading into a low moan. She tugged her hand from his, resting it first on his shoulder and then drawing it down his arm. Her fingers found the foil-wrapped condom he still held in his fingers. His heart pounded a mile a minute. 

She swallowed hard, and with his hand against her chest he could feel her heart was beating just as fast. “Can I?” she asked, indicating the condom. She sounded a lot more shy than she had been only minutes before.

“Mmhmm.” He wondered if there had been anyone for her besides Jasper. Her fingers shook as she took his length in her hand. 

He had to swallow a moan. That simple touch felt better than anything he remembered. She took her time, exploring him with her fingertips as she leaned forward to nip at his lips. Those little love bites, teasing little nibbles, turned into lingering kisses as she rolled the condom on him. 

Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled onto his back with Alice on top of him. He let his hands brush along her spine to her tailbone so he could slide her shorts down. He didn’t have words to tell her how she felt soft and amazing in his hands. He could have mapped every soft swell of her body for hours. He was, after all, a very thorough investigator. It was in his nature to want to find out exactly how to coax those tiny moans and breathy sighs from her. But he was distracted by the slip slide of her nude body moving over his.

She straightened and looked down on him. Her face was flushed, her hair rumpled from sleep and his fingers. Her smile was tender, adoring, and she locked eyes with him as she lifted herself to take him inside her. They both groaned with the feel of it. 

Her eyelashes fluttered, and they were both still save for their ragged pants. Then she reached back, steadying herself with her hand on his thigh as she rolled her hips.

They took their time, acclimating to each other. He met each roll of her hips with an upward thrust of his own. If he’d ever had to venture a guess, he’d have thought she would be a hellion in bed. He had no doubt she could be. But right then, with them, she was content with gentle and slow. Her touch, like his, was light, wondering. 

This was the kind of sex he had missed. There was nothing wrong with recreational sex, but sex with someone he cared about was simply more. Each touch was more, each movement. Pleasure was amplified, and the act became a conversation. How he cared for her, how he wanted to protect her, how he treasured her smiles and her happiness. All of it was there in the way he moved with her. Whatever they were to each other, whatever they were becoming, it was written in the electric current that flowed between them. They were on the same page even if neither of them had a clue what book they were reading.

When they were both spent, Alice collapsed over him, her limbs splaying out haphazardly. She tilted her head up so her lips rested on his neck, her erratic breaths almost uncomfortably hot. Her skin was slick and heated beneath his fingertips as he stroked his fingers through the sweat-dampened hair at the back of her neck. They were sweaty and sticky, but Charlie didn’t want to move. Not yet.

Generally speaking, Charlie was a get up and face the day kind of person. Life wasn’t going to wait on anyone, and you couldn’t stick your head in the sand and ignore reality for long. Right then, though, he thought he could have stayed in this bubble, muggy-mid-summer-in-Florida-hot at is was, forever.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think this hadn’t changed anything. He wasn’t fool enough to believe this wasn’t complicated. When they untangled their limbs, they would have to talk, and who knew what good would come of that. This was not happening in an orderly fashion at all.

But for now, Charlie only nuzzled the top of Alice’s head and pressed a kiss to her hair. Whatever was going to happen when they caught their breath, right then, he was happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Barburella is still shuddering on the floor. I feel like jessypt should be doing more fangirling than she is because I did give her fireworks and it’s not even nighttime yet!!!!
> 
> Jk. Love you, Jess.
> 
> Anyway. That happened.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Ya know what makes me happy? All of you who were creeped out by the pairing but you tried it anyway and, apparently, you like it. I mean, all of you make me happy, but yeah.

An emergency call from the station had Charlie up and out of bed well before he wanted to be. Alice grumbled, still mostly asleep, and burrowed deeper under the covers when he extracted himself from her arms. When he ducked back into the room, cleaned and dressed, her eyes were barely open.

 

Charlie hesitated. He wanted to stay there. It had been a surreal night and early morning. He didn’t know how to gauge her mental state given what she’d been doing the night before.

 

She looked a lot better than she had in weeks. In fact, curled up as she was in the center of his bed, in a sunbeam no less, she looked about as content as a kitten. That was probably what prompted him to cross the room. He sat on the edge of the bed and pushed her hair away from her eyes.

 

Alice yawned and offered him a sleepy smile. “I know. You don’t want to go but you have things to do, people to save.”

 

“No one to save, but yeah.”

 

“Humph. Likely excuse. You just want to make it out the door so you don’t have to see me again.” She gave a dramatic huff.

 

Charlie huffed, amused. “I live here.”

 

“Oh, that’s right.” She rolled over so she was more on her belly, her arms wrapped around the pillow as she yawned again. “In that case, I’ll be here, boss. Go on. The people of Forks need you.”

 

Her eyes were already closing again when he stooped to kiss her forehead.

 

In Forks, a true emergency was rare. An emergency that required the attention of the Chief-of-Police was even rarer. In this case, he hadn’t been lying to Alice. There was no one to save. A young man had committed suicide in a forested area just off the main road. And even that wouldn’t have necessitated Charlie’s presence, but the young man in question was from an influential Seattle family. Charlie was needed as a precaution.

 

Of course it would have to be a case like this after the night and morning he’d had with Alice. It made it impossible not to think about her, what they’d done, and what the right course of was action now.

 

The young man had old wounds just like Alice. Just like Charlie.

 

There was, Charlie knew, a huge difference between cutting and being suicidal. The two weren’t intrinsically linked. Still, it would be plain foolishness to believe Alice was in a healthy place. He needed to figure out what he was doing, what they were doing, sooner rather than later.

 

In order to do that, he figured he should have some idea what the heck he wanted. The problem with that was he hadn’t had time to think about it. He’d only barely let himself acknowledge he felt a pull toward her he thought he shouldn’t, and they’d gone from that to sweet kisses to sex in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t wise, and it definitely wasn’t like him at all.

 

He was about to turn thirty-seven. He was a grown man with a grown up daughter and a job that came with responsibilities and, in a town this size, a certain degree of notoriety. No matter what he did, the town gossips would have opinions about it. On top of all that, he was a man who craved a certain degree of steadiness in his life.

 

What in all hell did he think he was doing with a twenty-three-year-old widow? And his daughter’s good friend no less?

 

Those were the cold, hard facts, and Charlie had learned from a young age that cold, hard facts wouldn’t be ignored. Then again, Charlie had also learned from a young age that people simply weren’t mathematical equations. After all, if he’d been thinking rationally, plugging himself and Renee into an equation to see if they added up, he wouldn’t have Bella. It wasn’t as though he led a miserable life in spite of a few irrational decisions.

 

But Charlie didn’t have too much time to consider. The rest of the day was filled with paperwork, sad phone calls, and the business of making sure his officers had all the information possible before the young man’s parents showed up.

 

It was evening before everything that had to be handled was done at least for the day and Charlie was finally heading home. He still had no answers and no idea what was going to happen. The only thing he knew was that it felt as though he were coming home to someone, and that felt anything but bad.

 

He let that good feeling chase away the sense of foreboding and uncertainty. Should he have brought home a pizza or something? He probably could have called at some point during the day just to check in. Would she have expected that? Had she had time to regret what they’d done that morning? She’d said she’d wanted it for a while, but as he’d noted before, she probably wasn’t in the healthiest mindset.

 

Her car was still in the driveway when he pulled his cruiser in beside it. Charlie would have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t relieved to see it. Some inane part of him had entertained the idea she might have bolted. He lingered in the car for a few moments, wondering why the hell his heart was beating out of control, before he went inside.

 

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. He was greeted first by the smell of cooking tomatoes and spices. It hit him hard and made his stomach call out in yearning. He hadn’t eaten all day. He followed his nose to the kitchen where he found Alice. She was sitting on the counter next to the stove, her body twisted so she could stir something in a pot. He could see she had her earbuds in, so it looked like she hadn’t heard him come in. She seemed peaceful. Her lips moved and her head bobbed a bit to the music.

 

He paused to look at her, and felt the corners of his mouth turn up as his mood lightened. She really did seem happier than she’d been since her birthday. Happier and just so beautiful.

 

Because he wanted to and because he had no idea if he would get to do it again by the end of the night, Charlie strode forward, intent on kissing Alice. She didn’t notice him until he was close. She jumped in surprise and had just enough time to pull her earbuds out of her ears. “Charlie, I didn’t hear you c-”

 

Her words melted into a yelp when he put his lips to hers. Her gasp turned into a sigh, and she wound her arms around his neck. Charlie leaned on the counter, leaned into her, each of his hands on either side of her. She didn’t pull away. In fact, her legs widened slightly so he could fit between them, so he could gather her close enough that their bodies brushed even as he chased her tongue with his.

 

Minutes might have passed before he remembered they had much to talk about. As it was his thoughts felt thick, hard to grasp. His head spun with want, his skin protesting as he pulled enough away to let them both catch their breaths.

 

For a long time there was only the sound of their pants and the bubbling water from the pan beside them.

 

“Um.” Alice blinked and swayed a bit toward him as though she were disoriented. She licked her lips. “Dinner. I made dinner. Soup.”

 

Charlie didn’t make any attempt to step or look away from her. “I can see that.”

 

She slid off the counter and slipped her arms around his waist, tilting her head and pushing up on her tiptoes to catch his lips again. She could hold that pose for only a few seconds before she dropped back down. “We should eat,” she said, but he heard the words she meant.

 

We should talk.

 

He swallowed hard past the lump that rose to his throat. “Yeah.”

 

They filled a few minutes with the necessary task of getting dinner on the table. Charlie got the bowls and Alice set out the sandwiches she’d made to go along with the soup.

 

When they were seated across from each other they were both quiet. As usual, it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but it was a heavy one. Charlie weighed all the things he wanted to say with the things that needed to be said. Then, he prioritized. One question was more important than anything else.

 

“How are you feeling, Alice?”

 

She opened her mouth to answer right away but closed it just as quickly. With those simple words, some of her bravado drained away. She looked down, stirring her soup without taking a bite. “I don’t know yet,” she said after a moment. “I’ve been trying to decide.” She brightened slightly and smiled at him. “Better than yesterday.”

 

“That’s good.”

 

“Yeah.” She was quiet a few moments before she put her hand out on the table, palm up. Charlie put his hand in hers, watching as their fingers interlocked. She methodically stroked her thumb over his for about a minute before she spoke again.

 

“I think I was twelve or thirteen the first time I did it.” There was a faraway quality to her voice that made Charlie’s heart ache, but he understood. She needed the distance. “I don’t remember much about that time. My headspace was cloudy with a chance of balls ass crazy.

 

“I had these awful, awful things in my head. You know when you hear about someone doing something truly terrible. Rapists, child molesters, fucking Hitler. You hear about these people and you wonder how the hell they could live with themselves. And I felt like that… like how I thought they should feel. Like I was killed-ten-million-people awful.” She pressed her free hand in a fist to her mouth. “It hurts. It hurts worse than anything. Like you’re rotted inside. I did so many fucked up things. I cut all my hair off. I shredded my prettiest, best clothes.”

 

She took a deep breath. She was staring down at a fixed point on the table. “I found my Dad’s boxcutter and…” She looked up at the ceiling blinking rapidly to keep her tears at bay. “It was a relief. Sharp pain instead of this weight that was crushing me to death. And I could see it. I still don’t know why that feels better. Seeing it.”

 

“Because when you feel like that, the… normalcy of your reflection is obscene.” Charlie swallowed hard. It was work to find the right words, to make his tongue cooperate at all. “You feel ugly, and it doesn’t make sense when your skin is smooth.”

 

She looked at him, a tear sliding down her cheek. “How did you-”

 

His humorless laugh cut her off, and he met her gaze. “What do you think they do in therapy? They make you find words to talk about all this bull, and then they explain some of it. They tell you your head can get sick just like the rest of you, and part of why it’s especially terrible is that you can’t see it.” He huffed. “Which, as it turns out, is part of a vicious cycle, because anyone should be able not to slice themselves open with the nearest sharp object. So you get to thinking you’re just an asshole when really, you’re just sick.”

 

She laughed. It was a crying-through-your-tears kind of laugh, but her smile at the end was genuine. “God, how do you do that?”

 

“What?”

 

“These things don’t even make sense in my head, but you get it.” Alice reached across the table to clutch his hand in both of hers. “I adore you. You know that, right?”

 

Charlie’s lips quirked up and his cheeks heated. He brought his hand up to cover hers. “You adore me because I understand what you’re trying to tell me?”

 

“Yeah. Sure. That too.”

 

He cupped her cheek then, brushing the remnants of her tear tracks away. She exhaled a shuddering breath and tilted her head against his hand, her eyes closed for a handful of moments. When she opened them again, she stood, but she tugged Charlie up with her. He followed her to the living room where she pulled him down onto his arm chair. When he was settled, she snuggled against him, shifting so she was mostly on his lap. She picked up his hand, stretching it out so she could run her fingers over his knuckles as she found her words.

 

“You know, I’ve never really been a planner. Not for my life anyway. I can plan a party or a project, things like that aren’t a problem, but my own life? I just never have. I have dreams, and I work to see those dreams come true to an extent. But for the most part, I’m a follow your instincts, listen to your heart kind of girl.”

 

She stumbled a few times before she was able to figure out what she wanted to say. “I know I’m fucked up. No.” She interrupted him before he could protest. “Come on, Charlie. It’s impossible that I wouldn’t be, not after everything. I know who I am.

 

“These are the facts we have to deal with. I’m fucked up, and because I am…” She looked down, wiping away a tear that had managed to escape the corner of her eye. Charlie rubbed her back, waiting patiently.

 

“I miss my husband,” she whispered, gasping out one sob. “I miss him so much, and I’m so angry. Why him? He had just as much of a fucked up life as I did, but he doesn’t get a chance at happiness. It’s not fair. It’s not-” She closed her eyes and pressed her lips tight together, fighting tears with limited success. Charlie said nothing. He simply kept his arms tight around her so she would know at least she wasn’t alone.

 

Alice sniffled, and when she spoke again, her voice was calm again. “I miss Jasper, and I love him. Of course I still love him, and that’s what makes this all so confusing.”

 

Her eyes, when she looked at him, were pleading. “I don’t feel guilty about last night or this morning. Any of it. I don’t feel guilty about you at all. This-” She gestured between them. “Doesn’t feel wrong.”

 

She gripped his hands tightly. “I don’t really know what I want. No. That’s not right.” She screwed up her lips as she thought about it again. “I know what I want, but I’m questioning myself. Is this just one more fucked up part of me? To want something with you?” Her eyes darted to his and away. “And I realize I might be getting ahead of myself here. I haven’t stopped to ask you what you want.”

 

Charlie let out a sharp breath. “Something. Something is a good word for it.” What that was he had no more idea than she seemed to, but he didn’t want to stop.

 

Her lips turned up, and she shifted so she was sitting on the arm of the chair. She framed his face in her hands. “You make me feel safe. When you touch me, you make me feel wanted. I need you. I need you so much more than I should right now, but I know there’s more to this than that.

 

“I see you, Charlie. I need you to know that. This isn’t because you’re convenient. There are about a million things that have nothing to do with what I want and need that just add to this whole package of you.”

 

“Alice,” he said, but then he held his tongue. There was a lot he wanted to tell her, but it wasn’t his turn to talk.

 

She tilted her forehead against his. “Look, I can’t make you promises. I am a complete disaster right now, and I have way too many things to work out. But I want to know where this goes. I mean…” She fingered the collar of his shirt. “If you do.”

 

Rather than trust himself with words, he gathered her closer, pulling her off the arm of the chair so she was tucked up against him, two people sharing a space meant for one. He showered her face with slow, lingering kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, and the bridge of her nose. “Is this okay?”

 

“Yeah,” she said on a breath. “Yes.”

 

He kissed the tiny patch of skin above her upper lip. Her closed eyelids. Her chin. “Can I kiss you?” His lips were already so close to hers he could feel the heat of her breath.

 

In response, she tilted her head forward, pressing her lips quickly to his. She pulled away but only for a second before she melted against him.

  
With his kisses and his fingertips against innocent parts of her, he showed her that going slow was just fine by him, as long as it meant he didn’t have to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to barburella and jessypt!
> 
> How you doin? *winks at you*


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Good morning! Let’s do this, shall we?

“Well, well, well. Look who decided to turn up.”

 

Charlie raised an eyebrow at Billy as he stepped on his friend’s boat. “What are you talking about?”

 

“You’ve been flighty these last few weeks. You make plans, then you cancel them.”

 

Charlie just grunted. He sat down and opened his tackle box, busying himself in getting organized for the day’s fishing trip.

 

“So. Where you been lately?” Billy asked. He was piss poor at subtlety.

 

“Funny, I don’t remember having a wife.”

 

His friend chuckled. “It was a simple question. I have a teenage son, Charlie. I know what it means when someone answers so defensively.”

 

“Stop bugging him.” Billy’s girlfriend Sue smacked him on the arm as she passed.

 

Charlie shouldn’t have been so pleased at Sue’s intervention. He’d known the woman for years; she was sneaky and way too observant for his own good.

 

She waited until they were out on the water. Charlie had cast his line and sat back. He’d just popped open a beer and taken a big drink when she pounced.

 

“So. Who is she?” Sue asked, the picture of innocence.

 

Charlie inhaled too quickly and ended up coughing up beer. “Who is who?” he asked between coughs.

 

“Oh, don’t even start, Charlie. Billy was right. My kids play this game, I know they’re hiding something.” She nodded her head at him as though prompting. “So spill.”

 

“There’s nothing to say.” Those words were so wrong they tasted sour in his mouth, but he didn’t want to have this conversation. He wasn’t ashamed of what he was doing with Alice, but he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone else’s opinion on the matter.

 

Billy’s eyeballs bulged. “So you are seeing someone? Like seriously seeing someone?”

 

“I’m sorry. I missed the part where we were all back in high school.”

 

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Sue said. “You haven’t seen anyone seriously since high school. That was half your life ago, Charlie. It’s a big deal.”

 

Charlie chafed and looked away from his friends, wishing he wasn’t trapped on a boat with them. It irritated him more than anything that they were right about a few things. He hadn’t dated anyone since Renee, and the similarities in situation weren’t lost on him.

 

Then, like now, he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone at first. Alice didn’t make a lot of sense for a guy like him anymore than Renee had made any sense for the snot-nosed kid he’d once been. Neither one of them were the type to live the life he preferred: sedate and steady.

 

Alice, like Renee, had dreams bigger than Forks could contain, and that was something else he didn’t want to talk about. Alice and Renee were very different people, but Charlie knew damn well what it all sounded like out loud. Forks was a small community. Odd though it was, he was a small town celebrity. He knew from experience his romantic exploits were fodder for gossip. Like it or not--and he had to admit he’d felt a bit smug about it more often than was humble--he was Forks’s second most eligible bachelor. The only man who beat him was richer, slightly younger, more handsome and a lot more reclusive.

 

No one could know about them yet. Not yet. They wouldn’t understand, and Alice needed space to sort through her grief and depression without having to deal with anyone else’s opinion about what they were doing.

 

“Okay,” Sue said. “At least tell us how long this has been going on.”

 

Obviously they weren’t going to leave this alone. “Little over a week,” he said, concentrating on reeling in his line instead of looking at either of them.

 

“You’ve been cancelling on us for longer than that,” Billy said.

 

Charlie cast his line again with more force than was necessary and didn’t answer.

 

“Is it serious?” Sue asked.

 

He huffed.

 

Billy laughed. It was a guffaw so loud and out of place, it startled Charlie. “You’re a grown man,” his friend said. “I was just giving you a hard time. Okay, keep her secret. I’m sure you have your reasons. You always do. It gets serious, you bring her out here on the boat with us. That’s my only advice to you.” He jabbed a finger in the air. “Don’t trust a woman who doesn’t know how to fish or won’t learn.”

 

Sue put her hands on her hips. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

 

Billy shrugged. “Hell if I know. It just seemed like a wise thing to say. I’m a chief, woman. I’m supposed to give out sage advice.”

 

She shook her head and looked back to Charlie. “Everything’s okay, though? You’re sure?”

 

“Now who’s bugging him? Let the man fish.” Billy pulled Sue down beside him. “Anyway, this is Charlie. You don’t have to worry about Charlie.”

**~0~**

 

Late that afternoon, driving home, Charlie couldn’t help but notice the tingle of anticipation that travelled up and down his spine. Even though he’d had a good time, he was eager to come home. Home to Alice.

 

It had been a very long time since he’d felt that way. It was only a few months into his marriage that he started to come home to an unhappy wife. Then he was alone for a long time before Bella came to stay with him. When Bella was there, he looked forward to coming home more than when he’d been alone, but it was more a feeling of contentment than excitement.

 

He walked in the door with his catch and stopped himself from calling out for her. It was far too presumptuous. They were together, but it was a loose definition at best. It was only a matter of circumstance that they lived together. They wouldn’t have been cohabitating at this point if their relationship followed a normal timeline. She still slept in her room and he in his. In fact, except for that one night, they hadn’t done more than kiss.

 

So Charlie walked in the house without a word. He did close the door a little harder than was absolutely necessary, but then he headed straight for the kitchen. He’d denied Billy and Sue’s offer of cooking up his catch along with theirs in favor of heading straight home for dinner. He’d told them he wasn’t hungry.

 

He’d been lying.

 

There was something primitively satisfying about catching his own dinner. That feeling was doubled when he could feed someone else. He remembered the first time he’d gone fishing after he’d bought this house. He was puffed up with satisfaction and pride as he bounded up the steps. Here he was, providing for his family, putting dinner on the table in every sense of the words.

 

Of course, at seven months pregnant, Renee was less than pleased at the odor he brought home with him. She spent the night locked in their room, nauseated, and the fish tasted like ash in his mouth.

 

Charlie busied himself cleaning his fish. He froze the majority but kept enough for his own dinner and Alice’s, reasoning that if she didn’t want it, he could always leave it for lunch the next day. As he put together the ingredients of his old friend Harry Clearwater’s fish fry, he started to hum to himself.

 

He must have been engrossed because he didn’t hear footfalls on the stairs or across the kitchen floor. He didn’t notice Alice was there with him until she’d wrapped her arms around his waist. She was such a tiny woman, she had to peer around his shoulder rather than over it. “That smells amazing.”

 

It didn’t smell nearly as amazing as her small body pressed against his back felt, but thoughts like that were too foolish to put into words. Instead of voicing them, he turned his head to smile at her. She smiled back and pushed up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. He wished his hands weren’t covered in fish oil and crumbs so he could touch her.

 

“Is some of that for me?”

 

“Mmhmm. If you want it.”

 

“Ooh.” She leaned up to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “Of course I want it,” she said in a lower, seductive voice. She pinched his ass and grinned when he jolted. “But we’re off topic now.”

 

She winked and released her hold on him, opening the refridgerator and beginning to root through through the crisper for whatever vegetables she tended to store there. “That was one of the reasons I liked coming over here for dinner. Bella was always making fish. The Cullens are carnivores. Every one of them.” Her tone became wistful. “So was Jasper.” She cleared her throat. “Even Esme likes her steak so rare it’s still mooing.

 

“Don’t get me wrong. I like meat just fine, but this is the Pacific Northwest. It’s got to be something close to sacrilege that they don’t eat fish hardly ever.” She clucked her tongue. “Anyway, Charlie. I didn’t think you knew how to cook.”

 

Charlie scoffed. “Because Bella told you I couldn’t.” He shook his head, but his smile was fond as he thought of the look on his daughter’s face when she examined the contents--or lack there of--of the fridge and pantry the day she got there. “She’s not wrong, really. I know how to use the microwave, pour a bowl of cereal, and make a sandwich. I can also fry eggs and bacon. And…” He moved the fish from plate to pan, grinning as it made a satisfying crack-pop sizzle. “No one fishes as much as I do without learning how to fry fish. What did you think I did before Bella? Catch and release?”

“Didn’t really think about it too long, and you shouldn’t make me.”

 

“Why’s that?”

 

She sidled up to him wrapping an arm around him and leaning on him, batting her eyes prettily. “Because then all I’ll be able to think about is you in that hideous hat, and I may never want to kiss you again.”

 

He rolled his eyes, but bent quickly to capture her lips with his. “That is a fly fishing hat,” he said when he had kissed her breathless.

 

She made a face of mock horror, still holding onto him. “Don’t tell me. The regular fishing hats are worse?”

 

“You’re ridiculous.”

 

“You like it.”

 

He had to grin because he did. He really did.

 

They worked together side by side. It never escaped Charlie that Alice found excuses to touch him. Her hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she reached for a bowl. A bump to his side to get his attention. Those weren’t new. This last week or so she stopped often to peck his cheek or squeeze his arm.

 

It wasn’t just flirtation, though some of it was. She was starved for touch, and he understood that. She craved affection--a counterintuitive thought seeing as she’d pushed the most affectionate people out of her life for the most part.

 

But Charlie was happy to oblige her unspoken request. They were perhaps halfway through the dinner of the fish he’d made and the vegetables she’d steamed, when he grabbed the leg of her chair, pulling her over to his side of the table. She squeaked in surprise, her eyes lighting with laughter as her hands darted out. She steadied herself with her hands against his chest.

 

He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t really good with words. He liked touching her. More than filling her need for touch, she filled his need for this: silliness and spontaneity. It was a lightness he hadn’t realized was missing from his life, not until she was there. It seemed wrong in a lot of ways. It was her darkness that had given him light, but then again, he seemed to do her some good.

 

That in and of itself made him very happy.

 

Rather than try to say anything, he began to trace her fine features with his fingertips. He had a secret he’d never told a living soul. In his early teens, he’d been an avid reader of fantasy books. Alice was so lithe and ethereally beautiful--she was exactly how he’d pictured the elves of his books. She would fit in amongst otherworldly, mischievous creatures with ease.

 

She sighed and closed her eyes, pressing her hand over his against her cheek for a moment. Then she moved off her chair to straddle him. Then it was her hands tracing his face. He walked his fingers up her spine and brushed open mouthed kisses along her chin until he found her lips. His eyes were closed. Her tongue parted his lips and he was drunk off the taste of her, his thoughts as muddled as if she was the most potent wine. He thought he could stay like this forever--with her slight weight on his lap, her fingers tangled in his hair, playing at the nape of his neck, and her lips moving with his.

 

Then again, if they intended to stay somewhat innocent, now was probably a good time to stop. He knew what she looked like naked beneath his hands, after all. He pulled the slightest bit away from her, enough to break their kiss, and rested his forehead against hers, still holding her tightly.

 

He liked this too; how even their more peaceful moments could crackle with electricity.

 

After a minute like this, Alice kissed the tip of his nose and slid back onto her own seat. They managed to finish their dinner though every time their legs bumped, they stumbled over their words, fighting foolish grins. They left the dishes in the sink, distracted by an argument about the garage.

 

“I told you I wanted to tackle the garage next,” Alice said as they settled down on the couch.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with my garage.”

 

She made a pinched face. “Except the fact it can’t function as a garage. You can’t fit a car in there.”

 

“The cars fit fine on the driveway.”

 

“Come on, Charlie. It wouldn’t even take that big of a renovation--just a few well placed shelves and hooks.” She made a pleading expression and tapped her fingers at his crossed arms. “Please? I think it would help to have a new project.”

 

He huffed. The woman knew exactly how to play him though he supposed she could have a much more nefarious purpose than organizing his garage. “I don’t know why I even bother arguing with you.”

 

She grinned. “I don’t either.”

 

They lapsed into silence then, enjoying each other’s company and whatever show was on TV. Charlie wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking about what Billy had said and, well…

 

He was thinking about a lot of things.

 

“Do you like fishing?” he asked, breaking the long silence between them.

 

“Wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried it.” She kicked her legs over his lap and scooted closer. “You want to take me fishing, Charlie?”

 

“Would you go?”

  
“That depends. Would I have to wear one of those atrocious hats?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to barburella and jessypt. :) See you next chapter.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hola, kids! How you doing?

“Honey, you’re home.”

 

Charlie was surprised when he walked in the door and Alice, quite literally, pounced on him. Luckily for her, he had quick reflexes, and he caught her when she jumped into his arms. He wasn’t as young as he’d once been, but she was a slight thing. With her arms around his neck and her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, he held her with ease.

 

But he didn’t have much time to think about all that before her lips were on his, catching his grunt of surprise. He caught on quickly enough, and he got his arms around her, smiling into her fervent kisses.

 

He had no idea what had gotten into her, but he wasn’t minding it. “Alice,” he said between kisses. “You should at least let me take my gun off.”

 

Her snicker was wicked in his ear. “Ooh. I’ll help you get your gun off.”

 

He stifled a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan against her mouth before she loosened her hold on him. Rather than let him go completely, her hands dropped to his waist. Her eyes were mischievous as she unbuckled his belt and holster. She slid them off, hung his gun on the halltree, stuck her fingers through his belt loops and pulled him to her for another kiss.

 

For long minutes, Charlie didn’t even try to think. Alice walked backward, pulling him with her, and didn’t stop until her back was up against the wall. Her hands were on his waist. Then his chest. Then the kiss changed. What was languorous became intense. Her fingers began to work the buttons of his shirt.

 

He caught her wrists out of pure instinct, breaking their kiss. They blinked at each other, breathless, and Charlie tried to gather his thoughts, tried to figure out what had set off the warning bells in his head. Her expression went from startled to pissed to shame-faced in the space of a few heartbeats. She dropped her hands to her side, and he was quick to pull her into his arms.

 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, because despite the desperate cry of his body telling him to forget about it for fuck’s sake, he knew something was wrong. For weeks, they hadn’t tried to go further than deep kisses, though they’d gotten a little handsy from time to time. She hadn’t jumped him simply because she missed him.

 

She flashed him an annoyed look, but when she smacked his chest, her lips turned up. It was a lackluster smile at best, but effective. He knew she wasn’t angry at him. “Go put on a regular shirt. If you’re going to insist on being so damn perceptive and responsible, I at least want to cuddle comfortably.”

 

Not letting her go right away, he pressed a kiss to her forehead, stroking his thumb along her jaw. He lingered for a few moments before he reluctantly stepped backward.

 

It didn’t take but a few minutes to change out of his work clothes and into something more comfortable. When he went downstairs again, Alice was on the couch. Her gaze was distant, but when he got nearer she looked up with another small smile to acknowledge him. He sat beside her, and she quickly fitted herself against his side. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and waited, tracing his finger along her hairline behind her ear like he knew she liked.

 

She didn’t speak right away. She rested her head on his shoulder and began to play with his fingers. “Bella’s coming home in two weeks,” she said finally.

 

Charlie did his best not to react. He’d been hoping she would want to talk about that sooner than later. This wasn’t going to be a fun conversation. Charlie could admit to himself his stomach was churning with nerves and what felt suspiciously like fear.

 

He didn’t want this to be over.

 

“Alice,” he started, but she spoke first.

 

“I keep thinking you’re going to get sick of waiting for me to get my shit together.”

 

He hooked his fingers around hers. “I’d tell you if I saw that happening.” He paused. “You don’t want to tell Bella.”

She snorted. “I’m desperate to tell Bella my friend. Bella your daughter though…” She lifted her head to look at him. “Do you want to tell her?”

 

That was a complicated question. He didn’t like to think he was lying to his daughter, but it wasn’t as simple as all that. He thought a minute, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think this is a good time.”

 

There was no getting around the fact he was intimate with one of Bella’s best friends. There was no such thing as casually slipping that tidbit into conversation. Alice’s mental health aside, they weren’t at a point in their relationship where they could answer the kinds of questions that announcement would bring.

 

Alice looked relieved, but then the skin around her eyes tightened. “I’m going to move in with my parents.”

 

About a thousand arguments rose, but they all caught in his throat. There was not a single good reason it was a bad idea.

 

“It’s a good thing,” Alice said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than him. “Right?”

 

There were a lot of things he could have said. It was a good thing. It was a very good thing.

 

Alice was actively fighting to pull out of the depression she’d sunk into. Though Charlie had done his best to be there for her, he’d often thought she could do with some consistent, parental love. There was a reason she’d run away from her parents in the first place, and that was just one of the things she had to deal with.

 

He also thought going home would be a huge step toward healing from her husband’s death. From what she’d told him, she had a lot of good memories in her parents’ house. It hurt to remember the good times, but she also missed the happiness of those memories.

 

Going home again could help her find closure.

 

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” he said, answering her question.

 

Then again, over the last few weeks he’d been the one she turned to when she wanted to cut. She never said it, but he knew. He knew it when she crept into his room in the middle of the night and crawled into his bed, not looking for sex or even romance. She searched out the comfort of his arms until she could stop shaking, and he occupied her fingers until the need to take up a razor lessened.

 

Who was going to do that for her?

 

Most selfishly of all, he simply didn’t want to let her go. This was the reason Charlie hated change. He’d made a life of accepting the status quo, finding happiness or at least peace, with the cards he was dealt. He didn’t suffer from the-grass-is-always-greener syndrome. Despite all that, life had a way of changing despite his contentedness.

 

He didn’t have everything he wanted with Alice, and wasn’t prepared to lose what he did.

 

But he had no words for any of that. He was scared, and he didn’t like being scared. He especially hated being vulnerable. He didn’t know the right combination of words to make her remember him when he wasn’t right in front of her.

 

After all, he wasn’t supposed to be that important to her. A friend, yes, but no more than that.

 

In a moment of spontaneity, he slid off the couch onto his knees.

 

“Charlie. What are you--” She cut off with a gasp when he grasped her about the waist and pulled her to the edge of the couch.

 

He put a hand to her inner thigh, over her jeans, and looked up at her. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to stop him. She didn’t. She lifted her hips so he could tug her jeans down. He pulled them down and off.

 

Ever meticulous, he cupped his hand around the back of one ankle and tickled the bottom of her feet. He kept a firm hold on her so she couldn’t jerk away.

 

The bottom of her feet were almost black with dirt. It was one of those quirks that both perplexed him and had him enamoured. She was so meticulous about her appearance. One her worst days, it gave her some control, something to smile about if only for a few minutes.

 

She always knew she looked good even when she didn’t feel it.

 

But despite her careful attention to her looks, the minute she walked in the door, Alice pulled off her socks and shoes. When she’d organized his garage, she’d done it in her bare feet, even though Charlie told her repeatedly walking around barefoot in a garage was asking to step on a rusty nail.

 

“Luckily for me, you suck at keeping things like nails on hand, remember?” she’d said.

 

Charlie let his fingers skim up her ankle. He leaned down to press moist kisses to her kneecap. He heard her breath stutter as his fingers brushed over the sensitive spot at the back of her knees.

 

He lifted his head when he reached the scars that covered her thighs. When he looked at her, she was staring back, not with lust, though her cheeks were still pink from his efforts, but with shame.

 

He reached up to caress her cheek before he bent to kiss along the neat lines. He sucked lightly, careful of the most recently healed wound, and listened as her breaths became wild again.

 

“Charlie,” she groaned. Her fingers tightened in his hair and her hips bucked in reaction when he touched his tongue to her skin. “Oh, man. Don’t be a bastard.”

 

The breathless way she spoke stoked pleasure in the pit of his belly. He liked teasing her.

 

He pressed his tongue flat against her panties and licked her through the silky fabric, spreading her legs wider as he did.

 

“Sweet mother of pearl.”

 

He licked her in long, slow laps, turning the silk translucent and warm. He thrust his tongue into the fabric, using it to press against her clit.

 

It had been a long time since he’d done anything like this, but judging by the way Alice squirmed beneath him, he wasn’t doing too badly.

 

She tugged on his hair until he lifted his head. “Your mouth. I need your mouth. God. Please.”

 

He had to fight to keep the smug smirk off his lips. It was easy enough to conceal. He pulled her sodden panties down, and she helped kick them off. Charlie wasted no time. He hitched one of her legs up over his shoulder and coated his tongue with her taste.

 

As he fucked his tongue into her, he paid attention to the way her body moved. If her hips came up to meet his stroke, he knew he was on the right track. He used the tip of his tongue to spell his name on her clit, and she began to writhe. He slid two fingers into her and picked up the pace. He was dizzy with her scent surrounding him and the noise of her pleasure was making him want to push horizontal on the couch and slide on home. But he also wanted this memory, wanted to know he could have her undone. He wanted her to remember they were more than just cuddles and comfort. There was this to. This physical part of them they had only begun to explore. The way he touched her was linked inexorably to the way he felt about her.

 

And he felt a lot about her.

 

“Oh, man. Oh, god. Your moustache. That’s… that’s an unique sensation. Oh,” she babbled nonsensically.

 

He had to laugh. The vibration of it must have felt good because Alice gave a sharp cry and her heel dug into his back.

 

Charlie redoubled his efforts. In another minute, Alice had fallen so their position was awkward. He put her other leg over his shoulder and pulled her forward so only her upper back rested on the couch. He used his hands to support her lower back and thrust his tongue deeper.

 

She had one hand in his hair, alternately gripping and stroking, and had the other hand circling frantically at her clit.

 

With her legs clamped hard around him, Charlie almost suffocated when she came. He would have died a happy man.

 

He leaned back on his haunches, letting Alice slide down his body until she rested on his knees. Her eyes were still closed, her lips parted as she caught her breath. She wound her arms around his neck and fell bonelessly against him.

 

When he stood, his legs cracked. She giggled and lifted her head to kiss him. She licked her taste from his tongue, and wrapped her legs tighter around his waist.

 

She made him crazy, and it felt so good, he never wanted it to change.

 

Charlie shook the notion of change away and concentrated instead on the feel of her against him. He stumbled toward the stairs, not wanting to let her go, not yet. And she seemed to be on the same page. There was a hint of desperation in the way she kissed him. There was a recklessness about it, especially since they didn’t stop as he climbed the stairs. He kept a hand on the wall to keep them both steady.

 

When they made it to the top, he carried her to his room, his eyes still half-closed as they kissed. He set her on the bed, and she pulled at his clothes. He pulled off her shirt, and she scrambled for a condom in his nightstand. When they were both nude, she pulled him down on top of her, spreading her legs to welcome him.

 

A little space wasn’t going to change this, he tried to tell himself as he was enveloped inside her. It wasn’t going to change what was happening between them.

 

It occurred to Charlie later, when Alice was asleep in his arms, that he hadn’t fought for much in his life. He let his parents dictate a lot of who he’d become. He let Renee run away, and he hadn’t tried to stop her. He’d become a police officer because he had a family to support and had climbed the ranks quickly because he wasn’t really doing anything else with his life.

 

He stroked a stand of sweat-damp hair away from Alice’s face and kissed her forehead.

  
He had no idea what was going to happen between them, but he thought this time, if it came down to fighting for what he wanted--though he hadn’t let himself define that yet--he would do whatever it took.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Jessypt did NOT hold my hand while I wrote this, but she did beta it, so I forgive her. Thanks to barburella too. Much love to my girls.
> 
> Sooooooooooo. Bella’s coming home. How will that go?


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello, folks! Happy weekend!

Charlie thought he was imagining things at first. He hadn’t had much cause to get to know Rosalie Cullen--Alice’s older brother Emmett’s wife--but he knew from Alice’s stories that she could be brusque on her best days. She was, like the rest of the Cullen family, helping move Alice and Jasper’s things from storage into Esme and Carlisle’s house. Moving was likely to  make anyone grumpy, but there was something different about Rosalie’s cold attitude.

 

The third time she “accidentally” elbowed him as she passed, Charlie began to get the idea she was angry specifically at him.

 

First chance he got, when he was sure no one was looking, he grabbed Alice by the arm and hauled her into Carlisle’s study.

 

It hadn’t escaped his notice that her smiles had been forced today. She was sanguine with her choice to move back in with her parents, but the reason she’d taken off in the first place still stood. She was surrounded by memories of Jasper. Unloading the storage unit--filled as it was with remnants of their life together--was only making things worse. Maybe she would find some closure going through their things and resolving what was left of his too-short life, but it wasn’t going to be easy by a long shot.

 

“You read my mind,” she said when he’d closed the door behind them. Before he had a chance to say a word, she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head down for a kiss.

 

Charlie was so shocked he let her do it. He forgot what he was supposed to be asking and, for a moment, he forgot to be concerned. He’d been dying to kiss her all day. There was something about the fact her family and his daughter surrounded them that made the itch almost unbearable. It was one of the many reasons he hated secrets. Their clandestine nature made them impossible to stop thinking about.

 

Alice pressed him back against the door and Charlie groaned.

 

Nothing that felt this good could be so bad, could it?

 

He gripped her by the shoulders and pushed her back ever so slightly.

 

“I know. Don’t say it,” Alice said, holding a hand up to stop him from speaking. She made a face. “I was about to stop on my own. I swear.”

 

His lip twitched, and he brushed his fingers down her cheek. He let his touch continue down her body until he found her fingers and then he held her hand. “Did you tell Rosalie? About us I mean.”

 

Her face pinched. “I have exactly two girlfriends and one of them is your daughter,” she said, eyeing him meaningfully. “I had to tell someone.”

 

He grimaced but he didn’t argue. He couldn’t. He was more glad that she had someone else to talk to than he was nervous about the idea someone in this very house--this house filled with all the last people on the planet they wanted to find out about them--knew their secret. “She doesn’t like it,” he said, not asking.

 

Alice rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t like much.” She crossed her arms. “She’s protective, but she’s not going to say anything.” She glanced up at him with a furtive expression. “She thinks you’re going to ditch me when I’m not a convenient piece of ass.”

 

Charlie scowled and tucked her against his side. “What the heck kind of thing is that to say to a friend?”

 

“It’d fall under the category of tough love if it were true.”

 

“Well, it’s not.”

 

The look on her face suggested she was about to ask for a better definition of what they were doing than “not a convenient piece of ass” when they both heard her name being called.

 

“Speak of the devil,” Charlie murmured, letting Alice go. “We’ll figure out how to do this.”

 

A smile tugged at her lips, slight but there. She reached out and squeezed his hand. She left first, and he let a good five minutes pass before he followed. He stopped short almost the moment he stepped foot in the hallway.

 

Rosalie was leaning against the opposite wall, her arms crossed, her expression cool. “Lose something?”

 

It was clear they both knew exactly what he’d been doing in there. Charlie wasn’t about to play a game with her so he merely huffed and started to move past her. Just as he was about  pass,  her arm shot out, blocking his way. She fixed him with a steady glare.

 

“She’s been hurt enough,” she said.

 

“I know.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed her his card, doing his best not to smirk at the perplexed look on her face. “I don’t know what you do for a living, but if you’re ever looking for work, come see me. You’d make a good cop,”  he said and then he brushed past her, forcing her to drop her arm.

**~0~**

Charlie couldn’t sleep.

 

He was so attuned now to listening to the noises of the house, discerning how Alice was doing by how much she was moving around in her room. Before that, he occasionally paid attention to the noise from Bella’s room, especially after she had a boyfriend as agile as Edward. Obviously the original builder of the house hadn’t had any teenage daughters, putting the second bedroom’s window that close to an easily climbable tree.

 

But Bella wasn’t the same girl she’d been before college. For one thing Edward had stayed much later than he’d ever been allowed to when they were in high school. She was different. Much more confident than she had been when she came to Forks midway through her junior year.

 

And she was definitely not Alice.

 

He sat up in bed, rubbing a hand over her eyes. It was ridiculous how aware he was of his cell phone sitting on the nightstand. He had one for convenience, but he’d never understood why people couldn’t seem to put them down. Now the urge to pick it up itched beneath his skin. He found himself wondering if he’d missed a text or call from Alice. It was stupid for many reasons, not the least of which was he knew damn well he’d put the volume up high enough to wake the dead.

 

Grumbling at himself, Charlie gave in and picked up his phone. Of course, he had no missed texts. He pulled Alice’s name and checked anyway, wondering the whole time what the heck he thought he was doing.

 

The last three days they were under the same roof, Alice hadn’t bothered to pretend she wanted to stay in her own room. They never talked about it. There was never any question or awkwardness. Unwinding for the night turned into kisses and then more thorough kisses.

 

Those last three nights they couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Invariably they ended up in his bed, rolling over and into each other. They put off sleep as long as they could, drifting off when they were exhausted, only to wake in the early hours to start all over again.

 

So even though she’d only spent a grand total of five nights in his bed, Charlie missed her. He never thought it would make him happy to wake up sweaty and superheated where she was draped over him. Right then, he wanted to be able to reach over and pull her into his arms.

  
Charlie tapped the cell phone screen and laughed at himself. Despite the fact he was alone, he blushed. He wondered just how stupid he would come off if he texted any number of the things running through his head. Some of it was mushy. The kind of foolish words he’d never in his life been able to say except once to an equally foolish girl when they were both teenagers.

 

Some of the things that ran through his mind were filthy.

 

Sexting was a thing nowadays, wasn’t it?

 

Maybe for horny teenagers.

 

Beyond all that, he was also worried for her. Was the stress of being home again too much? She’d tossed Edward out of his room without asking, explaining simply that he had the best view. In reality, her foster brother’s room was the only one on the third floor of the Cullen house. It was probably the room that held the fewest memories of her life with Jasper.

 

“I can’t go back to my room or his room, of course. And Jasper was always in Emmett’s room playing video games or, well… doing things I probably shouldn’t admit to the chief of police,” she’d told him. “I could live on my own. Sometimes I think that would be easier. But I don’t want to.”

 

Charlie didn’t want her to be alone. If he couldn’t be the one with her, he was glad she had her parents and, for the summer, Edward to go to.

 

He clicked out of his text messages and back into them. Just in case. His cell was always doing weird things. Maybe this was one of them. Maybe he should send a text just to make sure. But no. If she needed him, she would have texted by now. With any luck she was asleep.

 

Resolving to leave the texts alone, he navigated to his photos. There weren’t many, and Alice had taken the most of what was there. She liked to tease him about how little he used his phone. “Why get a smartphone when you’re only going to use it as a phone?”

 

A jolt of shock went down his spine when he came across a photo he’d never seen before. It was a photo of the two of them--him and Alice. She must have taken it that morning. In it, he was fast asleep on his side, his arm snug around her waist, her back against his chest. She was awake and smiling sleepily at the camera, one arm held out, the other resting over his. They made quite a pair--obviously nude with equally sex-touseled hair. She looked happy and even in his sleep he looked content.

 

None of that was what caught his attention immediately though. What struck him first was the view of their upper arms. Their scars were not only visible but very obvious. The neat, dark-pink lines stood out in the early morning sunlight.

 

Maybe it should have bothered him. He didn’t like seeing his scars. He always kept his eyes averted from his shoulders whenever he had to look in the mirror before he was dressed. More often than not, he put his shirt on before he did anything else.

 

But seeing them as part of this photo, captured until the picture was destroyed, he didn’t mind. More than that, he felt a deeper connection with the woman smiling back at him. Alice must have been on the same page. She was ashamed of her scars, yet here she was, displaying them proudly along with the rest of her. Charlie was used to Alice’s selfie habit. If she wasn’t satisfied with the result it got deleted.

 

Charlie gave in and texted Alice.

 

How are you?

 

There. That wasn’t embarrassing at all. Except that it was sent at three in the morning, but he could always claim faulty technology if necessary.

 

When his phone rang a minute later, he wasn’t sure if he should feel bad about how glad he was she wasn’t sleeping. “Hey,” he answered, smiling in spite of himself.

 

“What are you wearing?” she asked in a sultry tone. She giggled when he groaned. “What? No phone sex?”

 

His cock stirred in his boxers at the idea, and Charlie laid back, banging his head on his pillow. “Umm,” he started, swallowing hard.

 

“Ooo. That’s not a no.” She giggled again, but then she sighed. “I miss you, Charlie.”

 

“Yeah, me too.” A beat. “It’s not like we’re not going to see each other.”

 

“Are we? I know I’m going to see Bella, but that’s not the same thing as seeing you. You know what I’m saying?”

 

“I know.” He tapped his fingers restlessly against the bed. “Are you working tomorrow?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Can we get lunch? I can pick you up.”

 

Yet another thing Charlie hated about secrets: the inevitable sneaking around. They both knew there wouldn’t be any food involved if he picked her up. He was already mentally sorting the secluded places he could get to not far out of Forks.

 

“I can get away,” Alice said. “Someplace quiet.”

 

“I know a few places.”

 

“Good.” She paused. “I wish you were here. Or I was there. Or I had decided to live on my own.”

 

“We’ll figure it out, sweetheart. Eventually.”

 

She took a slow breath. “I’m trying to figure out what my life is supposed to look like. None of this is a long-term plan. Nothing. Not even my job. It’s just hard to think past the end of the week right now. I used to be able to see everything. I could see my future all mapped out when I married Jasper. We knew exactly what we were doing.”

 

“I think all teenagers feel that way,” he said, remembering the feeling.

 

“Maybe.” She gave a soft, humorless chuckle. “I’d settle for a five year plan. Isn’t that the adult thing to do?”

 

“I don’t know that I ever had a plan. Provide for my wife. Provide for my daughter. Be a good son, as good a father as I could be from a distance. Be a good cop. A good neighbor. Isn’t that all there is to life?”

 

“Is it? I have no idea anymore. I haven’t made it through a whole week without canceling an appointment yet. That’s really the only goal I’ve had for months.”

 

“You’ll get there, Alice.”

 

She made a noncommittal noise, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. “Charlie?” she said a minute later.

 

Hearing her voice, knowing she was all right for the night, Charlie had calmed enough that he felt tired. “Hmm?”

 

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few heavy moments before she grunted. “Nothing. I miss you, that’s all. I already said it, but it’s true.”

  
“Tomorrow,” he promised. He swallowed and spoke gruffly. “I miss you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Jaysus, Charlie. Is I miss you really so hard to say?
> 
> Many many many thanks to songster who battled her queasiness to beta for me. (I only got one Aiiiiieeeee!!!). Thanks to barburella and jessypt. 
> 
> How we doing out there?


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Merry Tuesday, everyone.

This was ridiculous. This was beyond ridiculous.

 

He was way too old to be doing this kind of crap. Sitting in the backseat of his car with his girlfriend--girlfriend?--straddling his lap, both of them writhing and pawing at each other, making out as though they were both horny teenagers. In fact, the last time he’d done anything like this, he had been a horny teenager.

 

His daughter had been conceived in the backseat of a beat up old car.

 

But it was hard to think when it felt so good to hold Alice like this, to feel her body warm against his.

 

Charlie was distracted by the wet smack as her lips disengaged from his and she giggled. She cupped his face in both her hands and used her thumbs to smooth his moustache. The look on her face was so tender, her smile adoring. It was cold outside, but he was warm…almost too hot, actually.

 

Almost.

 

She giggled again, a soft titter, and he rubbed his hands up and down her back. “What are you laughing at?”

 

“It’s just funny.” She wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck and settled on his lap. She tapped the foggy window. “The cop is supposed to be on the other side of this, knocking on the windows, telling us to move along.”

 

He worked his hands under her shirt and ran his fingers over each notch of her spine. She’d gotten so skinny, too skinny at the worst of her struggle. He let his hands fall to her waist, pleased at the way her flesh felt against palm. She was filling out again. “I never busted anyone for this.”

 

“Isn’t this public indecency?” Her voice was low, teasing. She’d begun to tug at his collar, straightening it.

 

“No one’s around for miles. I’d have had to go out of my way to bust someone for this.”

 

That was the whole point. Most amorous couples out on abandoned roads were only looking for a little privacy. He and Alice were deliberately hiding from prying eyes, and if they were discovered, well… it wouldn’t be drama free.

 

With a small sigh, Charlie reached up, tracing a finger along her hairline. “How are you?”

 

He almost regretted asking when the tender look drained into a tight expression. She ducked her head almost instantly to hide her face at his neck. She didn’t answer right away, but she played with the buttons of his shirt.

 

“We, my mom and I, sorted a lot of Jasper’s clothes a good week and a half ago. I’ve been trying since then to drop them off at the thrift store.”

 

“Did you make it?” he asked, keeping his tone and touch light.

 

She shook her head, her hair tickling his neck. He heard her thick swallow and felt the rapid beat of her heart. “I put it in Mom’s car, though. I let her take it.”

 

Charlie tightened his hold on her. She was shaking, and there weren’t any words that sounded right in the situation. It was good she was moving on, but it had to hurt like hell. Good wasn’t a word she’d want to hear. He was proud of her too, but that he would bet she didn’t feel very strong right then.

 

So he held her while she shook. She took a few unsteady breaths before she lifted her head. She still wasn’t looking at him, but her fingers didn’t tremble. “It’s scarier than it should be.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Seeing the future again.”

 

He traced the line of her neck. “What do you see?”

 

“Life,” she said, and she took another deep breath. “I didn’t know if I still wanted some of the things I wanted before. Any of them. We had plans--Jasper and I. They were our plans, but they were also my plans. What I wanted. Like my work. I want to do something interesting, you know? Like anthropology. I used to love the idea of being one of those people you see on random documentaries that are experts on something so obscure, you’d never guess someone made a living that way.”

 

“And now?”

 

She hummed and sniffled, a small smile tugging at her lips. “I liked redoing your kitchen and the garage. And I want to do the bathroom.”

 

He pulled back. “What’s wrong with the bathroom?”

 

“Oh, honey.” She giggled. “I don’t even know where to start.”

 

Charlie chuckled, shaking his head, and kissed her again. Their time was up.

 

They drove back to Forks holding hands on the shifter. Her grip got tighter as they got back to civilization.

 

“Hey, Charlie?” Alice said as they pulled up in front of the market they’d met in front of.

 

He ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Hmm?”

 

She tilted her head to look at him for a long moment, the expression on her face nervous somehow, uncertain. “What do you--” she started, but then her eyes focused somewhere over his shoulder and she cursed.

 

“What are you--” he started to ask as she ducked down, crouching on the floor of the cruiser.

 

“Bella’s in front of the store,” she hissed, whispering even though they were safely enclosed in the cab of the car. “Quick. Go pretend to run into her before she sees you.”

 

He got out of the car and was striding across the parking lot toward his daughter in the next second, his heartbeat quickened.

 

“Hey, kid. Kids,” he said, getting Bella’s attention. She was there with Edward, both of them sipping iced coffees from the little shop inside the store.

 

“Dad. What are you doing here?” Bella yelped, jumping up.

 

She sounded guilty, but Charlie dismissed it. He was guilty and projecting. That was all.

**~0~**

The last thing Charlie hated about secrets was the way they tended to not stay secrets. Not only that, when the truth inevitably came out, the situation was at least ten times as dramatic as it would have been if only it had been told in the first place.

 

Of course, caught in the middle of a secret affair, he thought he had a good reason. He had a damn good reason to be keeping secrets. Alice’s mental health wasn’t anything he was willing to mess with.

 

So, he was playing the game he’d watched other people play all his life. A secret necessitated lies, careful tending, and remembering details. He wasn’t going to say he liked it. He especially didn’t like how jumpy he felt around his own daughter, wondering what she was going to think when she knew.

 

If there was anything to find out.

 

The summer wore on in a series of what might have been near misses. He saw Alice when he could, when they could sneak away for a kiss. For the first time in his life, he hated how small Forks was. It wasn’t as though he could check into an anonymous hotel room for a few hours with her, and wasn’t that a tawdry idea anyway? But he missed her, and she missed him. The longing made everything more intense when they could be together, and that… Well, he couldn’t regret that. More than one of his officers had noticed the shit-eating grin on his face after those encounters.

 

The rumor mill was buzzing, and he knew it. The thought irritated him more than once when he had a chance to dwell on it. But when he was actually with Alice, none of it mattered or at least, it seemed like the most rational thing in the world to do.

 

Toward the end of July, Alice stayed true to her word to let him take her fishing. Bella expected Charlie to go fishing, so he didn’t worry about alibis. The great thing about the Olympic Peninsula were the sheer number of rivers, lakes, and secluded beaches that surrounded them. It wasn’t hard to find a place where they could be totally alone.

 

Alice packed a lunch and they ate by the side of the river. He tried to teach her about the habits of the fish they were after and the different kinds of bait and tactics she could use. Alice watched him intently, nodding with what he knew was mock-gravity until she couldn’t hold back her laugh.

 

“I’m not laughing at you,” she said. She put her arm around his waist and fed him a bit of cheese, grinning in that way she knew charmed him. “You’re just so serious about it.”

 

“Well, if you’re going to do a thing, do it right.”

 

“No, I agree.” She studied him a moment. “It’s just funny. You make it sound fascinating. I should be bored out of my mind, but I like listening to you.” She rested her chin on his chest, staring up at him, waggling her eyebrows. “Tell me more.”

 

He quirked an eyebrow, fighting a grin, and pecked at her lips, tasting beer and cheese. He stood, bringing her with him. “Come on. Theory isn’t ever going to match hands on practice.”

 

“I like hands on practice,” she said, pinching his ass.

 

They got down to the business of fishing. Alice let him teach her how to cast. Charlie liked that very much. He liked slipping his arm along hers, murmuring in her ear the best way to flick her arm. He liked the tense and release of her body as she followed through, and the look on her face that if she wasn’t enjoying fishing, she was enjoying being close to him.

 

Surprisingly little time passed before Alice jumped to her feet. “Charlie, Charlie. Look. There’s tugging.” She pointed at the pole which was indeed tugging down.

 

“Both hands on the wheel.” Charlie abandoned his pole to help with hers. “Don’t let go. They’re stronger than you think. Reel it in slow. You got it.” He had his arms around her, his hands on on her wrist, just guiding, letting her bring the fish in.

 

She bounced on her feet a bit as she reeled it in. “I got it. I got it.” She gave a small squeak as the fish broke the water. “Holy crap!”

 

Charlie whistled, steadying her. “That’s a big one. Get it up on the shore. Yeah. Like that.”

 

Alice held the fish up in triumph. “I caught it! Charlie, I caught it. Oh. Ick. What do I do with it?”

 

He laughed and helped her transfer it to the cooler. She was still grinning when he turned around. “It’s a beauty too,” he said.

 

“It’s disgusting,” she said around a laugh. “I prefer them already cooked.”

 

“We’ll have it for dinner tonight.” He didn’t know how yet, but he’d make it happen. He could get Bella to invite Alice over. They’d done that a few times.

 

Her eyes sparkled and she bounced up onto her toes again. “I caught it.”

 

“You did.” She looked so ecstatic and proud, he leaned in to kiss her. She ducked away with a noise of surprise. “I smell like fish.” She wrinkled her nose. “God, there’s a filthy joke in there somewhere.”

 

He ducked his head to skim him nose at her neck and breathed in deep. She squealed, ticklish there.

 

She smelled like sunshine and trees, like dirt in the rain and crisp, clean water.

 

He meant to tell her these things, or at least to tell her she smelled good, but the only noise that came out was a deep grunt. He raised his head to taste her lips and lingered. He’d meant to only give her a quick kiss, but his nuzzling at her neck had changed the air around them.

 

Alice must have felt the shift because in the next breath, she was wrapped around him, her arms at his neck, one leg hitched up on his thigh. The adrenaline of celebration drained into something much more potent.

 

His hand to her cheek, Charlie began to kiss her in earnest, keeping her leg pressed against him with his other hand. He ran his hand from her ass along the underside of her thigh, caressing as his tongue pressed into her mouth, stroking along hers. WIth his eyes closed, he breathed her in.

 

They moved together without disentangling themselves until they were back on the blanket they’d laid out for lunch. They knelt, and he pressed her backward, only disengaging from their kiss to look at her when he was hovering over her.

 

His whole life he’d been escaping to the silence and solitude of the trees, the water, the fish. Sure, he enjoyed fishing with his friends, with Billy and Sue, but he’d never shared a moment with them out here. Not like this. It seemed like she was part of this place, part of the freedom, peace, and contentment he felt when he was out by the water.

 

That was what she smelled like, what she tasted like, what she looked like there on the bank of the river. She was everything he loved about life. He loved her.

 

Oh god. He loved her.

 

That one fact drove the breath from his body and set his thoughts spinning. He’d known. On some level, he’d known for a long time he was falling in love with her, but in that moment, it became a permanent part of him. He felt it physically under his skin--that she’d carved out a space in his heart that would only ever be hers.

 

Powerful thing, that.

 

His fingers trembled slightly as he lifted a hand to trace the line of her cheek, to run his fingertip over her lip. She was watching him, her eyes soft.

 

He couldn’t say he was surprised when he felt her hands at his belt. She undid the buckle and slid it off and then undid the fly of his jeans. All the while, she didn’t take her eyes off him. He sat back on his knees, watching her as she lifted her hips, letting him tug her jeans and panties down.

 

He kissed a trail from her bare ankle on upward and would have gladly buried his tongue between her thighs except she tugged at his hair. Following her wordless direction, he kissed her. She kissed him back, spreading her legs to invite him in.

 

This was still new to them. They hadn’t been together so often that her body wasn’t novel to him. Still, it was different. Everything was different. Sex was so much more powerful when he knew with every movement that he loved her. Sex with Alice, had always been different--more, better than anything he’d experienced before--but this was…

 

He muffled a whimper against her mouth and twined their fingers together, pinning her hands above her head as they quickened their rhythm. The orgasm that was building in him was going to kill him. What he felt for her was too strong, and he was honestly terrified, but he couldn’t stop. He wasn’t going to stop, not when she felt so tight and perfect around him.

 

Good god, if he was going to die, he was going to die a happy man.

 

“Charlie,” she moaned beneath him, the word drawn out in a high-pitched whine. “Charlie, please.”

 

The little noises she was making were criminal. He felt her walls begin to contract around him, and it was the sound of her shriek of pleasure that pulled him with her to orgasm. It was such a powerful one that he thought his prediction had actually come true or it was about to anyway. His heart stopped, his lungs stopped working, and his thoughts went white.

 

He must have started breathing again at some point, because he gradually became aware of sensations other than the daze of his head. For one thing, every exposed inch of skin, moist from their exertions, was chilled by the breeze. He lifted his head, but as he did, something caught his eye. He went stiff.

 

“Charlie?” Alice asked, her hand on his face. When he didn’t answer, she tilted her head all the way back and gasped.

 

Charlie rolled over, bringing the edge of the blanket and Alice with him as he did, covering her up and hiding his bare ass from view but it was too late. It was way too late.

 

There were many days Charlie had gone fishing where he hadn’t run into a single soul all day, but then again, there was always the possibility another fisher was about. But this… This was a worst case scenario.

  
The hikers who had just come across Charlie and Alice in their compromised position were none other than one of Bella’s former schoolmates Jessica Stanley and her mother Janet, one of the town’s biggest gossips and Charlie’s one-time lover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So. Hmm. That happened.
> 
> Many thanks to barburella and jessypt.
> 
> Well. Now what?


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: *whistles*

A few years back, before Bella came to live with him, Charlie had let some of his officers drag him out for a few beers. Something had happened--a bad accident a ways down the highway, and they all needed to forget the carnage after a long, heartbreaking day.

 

Janet Stanley had also been there that day, nursing a broken heart and wounded ego because her estranged husband had finally served her with divorce papers. Eventually the other officers went home to their families. Charlie stayed talking to Janet, not ready yet to go back to an empty house.

 

The bottom line was Janet needed to feel pretty and desirable. Charlie wanted the comfort of someone’s warm arms around him, chasing away the cold ugliness of the day. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, he felt. They’d enjoyed their time together, but since then Janet had always hinted she wouldn’t mind something more.

 

That was really what her rant was all about. She was as embarrassed as he and Alice were, looking away and babbling apologies as they pulled pants back on. Things rapidly went downhill from there.

 

Janet was good at reading body language. He knew that about her. She saw way more than he wanted her to. Her eyes went to where his and Alice’s hands were joined before Charlie even realized he’d reached for her. His stance, as he stepped in front of Alice was protective, and she wrapped her free hand around his arm.

 

They were together, and Janet knew it.

 

There was a perceptible shift from mutual embarrassment to indignance on Janet’s part. Jessica was tugging on her arm, trying to get her to keep walking, but the woman started in on the moral high ground.

 

“What the hell is wrong with you? What if I’d had a child with me? You’re the chief of police. You’re supposed to be arresting people who do this kind of thing. And with Alice Cullen? She’s your daughter’s age.”

 

“I’m not Bella’s age,” Alice said. “And what business is it of yours, anyway? We’re not even in Forks’s jurisdiction out here.”

 

“Mom,” Jessica said. “God, would you cut it out? Can’t you take a hint. We’re leaving. Sorry, Alice. Sorry Chief Swan. Just, uh… Yeah. Have a good time.”

 

She dragged her mother away, Janet still protesting. Charlie caught a few words. Perverted. Disgusting.

 

When they were out of eyeshot, Alice buckled at the waist, her hands on her knees. “Oh, god. I should have seen this coming. I did. I mean, I thought about...if we...but then you. Ugh, God it was so hot, and I didn’t think. I just didn’t think. And holy crap, did she actually just use the ‘think of the children’ excuse? I didn’t know people did that in real life, off the internet.”

 

“Alice…” Charlie rubbed her back, but he couldn’t figure out what to say. His heart was pounding a mile a minute. “Are you okay?”

 

She straightened, looking at him with a stricken expression. “Am I okay? Charlie, we have to get home. We have to figure out something to say to Bella right now. You know that Jessica is going to text her the second she gets back in cell phone range, right?”

 

He could hardly swallow around the lump in his throat. “Damn cell phones. You wonder why I hate them.”

 

Her lips quirked up and down, and she gave a humorless laugh. letting him pull her close. She sighed, resting her head against his chest. “I just...I wanted one thing not to be surrounded by all this drama. I could be a whole season of the Jerry Springer show.” She squeezed him tight about the waist. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t apologize, sweetheart. This isn’t your fault.”

 

She groaned. “This town. This fucking tiny town. Is it too much to hope no one will care?”

 

Charlie’s cheek twitched. No, he knew how even minor gossip flowed in this town. He kissed her forehead, trying to tamp down the fear rising him. He held her tighter.

**~0~**

Sure enough, the second they were back in cell range, both Alice and Charlie’s cell phones chimed with incoming text messages. Charlie didn’t bother to go back to the market where they’d left Alice’s car. They went right to Charlie’s house to face the music in the form of Bella and Edward.

 

Bella came out onto the porch as Charlie and Alice got out of the car.  Charlie kept his eyes on her, both because he believed in facing any kind of firing squad with his head held high and because he was trying to gauge her mood. One of the benefits of living alone as long as he had was that it had been a long time since he’d come home in the dog house.

 

Coming around the front of the truck, he offered his hand to Alice, still looking at his daughter. He had to admit he felt better with her hand in his. Bella’s eyes darted to their hands, and she made a face. “God, that’s so weird.”

 

Charlie raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t comment until they were all inside. Rather, he would have said something, but Bella started talking first. “Jessica wouldn’t shut up about what a nice ass you have, Dad.” She shuddered as she sat down on the large recliner already occupied by Edward. The boy’s expression registered surprise, but he put his arm around her. “That’s just not something your kid wants to hear. Ever. My friends aren’t supposed to know what your ass looks like, and I’m not supposed to have to think about the fact that not one, but two of my friends know what your ass looks like.” She shook her hands rapidly as though shaking off the heebie jeebies. “Two of my friends, Dad. Two.”

 

“I understand why Jessica got stuck on the subject,” Alice said before Charlie could speak. Her tone was light, almost disinterested. “Charlie does have a really nice ass.”

 

“Alice,” both Edward and Bella exclaimed.

 

Charlie giggled. He honest to god giggled. It was a maniacal sound. He let go of Alice’s hand so he could cover his face as he tried to calm his reaction. He was more charmed than horrified at Alice’s words. They were so Alice. He loved her.

 

He loved Alice, and his daughter was staring at him as though she suspected he had gone out of his mind. Maybe he was about to.

 

“Look,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I think it goes without saying I wouldn’t have wanted you to find out like this.”

 

“When were you planning on telling me?” She looked at Edward. “Us? Everyone? This is kind of huge.”

 

Charlie glanced at Alice, but she had no answers. He reached for her hand and looked back to his daughter who was glaring at their joined fingers as though she expected them to burst into flames. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk about that.”

 

“Are things that recent?” Edward asked, looking at Alice. There was a note of betrayal in his tone and a hurt look on his face. Of her two foster brothers, she and Edward shared a closer, more special bond that Alice treasured. Obviously the feeling was mutual.

 

“It’s not… It’s been a while. Before you guys came back home,” Alice said.

 

“So it’s been months,” Bella said. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.” She stiffened, a look of horror coming over her face. “Did you sleep in my bed?” she blurted. “Wait. Oh God. Don’t answer that. Nevermind. Forget I asked.”

 

Charlie, his cheeks flaming hot by that point, straightened up. This was getting out of control, and he was ready to take charge of the situation. “Let’s talk about what this is and what it isn’t,” he said in his best I’m-a-police-chief-and-your-father voice as he looked at his daughter. “We have our reasons for keeping this to ourselves. If I thought it was going to personally affect you, I’d have told you.”

 

“Well, it’s sure as heck affecting me now.”

 

“Is it really such a bad thing for you?” Alice asked.

 

Bella hunched her shoulders as though taken aback by the question. “Bad?” She crossed her arms, leaning tighter against Edward’s side. ”It’s not bad. I think. I mean…” She grimaced. “Jessica said her mom keeps talking about you like you’re fourteen or something, like Dad was some kind of pervert. That’s obviously just stupid. The age thing…” She looked to Charlie. “Alice is an adult. I know you didn’t take advantage of some innocent little girl, Dad. And you.” She pointed at Alice. “Jessica thinks it may have been the other way around.”

 

“What?” The word was sharp, and Alice scowled. “Just what the hell am I supposed to be taking advantage of? Bella, you know I wouldn’t--”

 

“I know, idiot.” Bella’s lips quirked upward the slightest amount. “I don’t know what the heck is going on, but I know it’s not bad.”

 

Again, Charlie glanced at Alice to find she was looking back at him, her eyes soft. The knot in his belly eased for the first time since the Stanley girls had come across them in the woods, and he began to hope this would all work out.

 

He was distracted from anything else he might have said when Bella stood and began to pace. “Actually, I’m kind of glad this happened.” She wrung her hands. “It makes things easier.”

 

Charlie’s cop-sense turned on full throttle. “Easy?” he echoed, already knowing in his gut he wasn’t going to like what was coming.

 

“Uh…”

 

Edward took her hand and pulled her down beside him, stilling her frenetic motion. They looked at each other, his look questioning and nervous, and hers bone-pale scared.

 

Ah, hell.

 

They seemed to be having a silent conversation with their eyes, but then Edward cleared his throat. He took Bella’s hand in both of his, squeezing perceptibly as he looked Charlie in the eyes. “We have news.”

 

“Uh huh,” Charlie said, anger already beginning to pool with dread in his stomach.

 

“I proposed to Bella before we left school. We’re getting married.”

 

For three seconds, the words didn’t register. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but those words, when they did hit, struck him like a flash flood. All the air went of him, and he found himself on his feet, disoriented as he stared at the two teenagers in front of him. “You want to say that again?”

 

“Whoa,” Alice said on a breath. “Wow. I didn’t see that coming.”

 

Charlie tried to calm his breathing. Air in his lungs was more conducive to yelling, which was the least of what he wanted to do. “Are you pregnant?” he asked his daughter through clenched teeth.

 

“No.” She looked at Edward. “You see? I told you. Everyone is going to think that.”

 

“Well they can think it all they want. You’re not going to be pregnant at our wedding so the theory will be disproven pretty quick, won’t it.” This was obviously a conversation they’d had before.

 

“Bella, you’re not getting married, so put that fool idea out of your head,” Charlie said, somehow resisting the urge to yank her away from Edward. Far away. Possibly back to Florida with her mother away. “How could you keep this from me for months?”

 

His daughter fixed him with a cool expression. “Really, Dad?”

 

He knew he had no leg to stand on. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not happening.”

 

“Not for nothing, but I wasn’t asking anymore than you asked me if you could screw one of my best friends in the woods where anyone could see.”

 

“Don’t be crude, and don’t be ridiculous, and don’t try to change the subject.”

 

“Okay. You don’t want me to talk about this?” Bella gestured between Charlie and Alice. “Fine. You still can’t be mad about me and Edward, Dad. You and Mom--”

 

“Your mother and I were idiotic children. That’s what you call people who get married at eighteen: idiots.”

 

“Is that what you really think?”

 

Charlie froze. It wasn’t Bella who’d spoken but Alice. He didn’t need to register Edward’s wince to know he was in deep shit. He turned away from his daughter and her boyfriend--fiance, ugh--to find Alice on her feet, glaring daggers at him with her arms crossed. “Alice--”

 

“What? Are you going to say if my husband hadn’t died, I would have ended up regretting marrying him? You think that’s what we were? Idiot children who thought they were all grown up at Bella’s age, and when I’m older and wiser I would have regretted it? You think marrying Jasper was a mistake for me?”

 

“I never said any of that.”

 

“‘That’s what you call people who get married at eighteen: idiots,’” she mimicked. “That’s what you think about Bella and my brother. Why not me?”

 

“It’s different.”

 

“How?” she demanded, but she held up her hands just as quickly to stop any argument. “No. Never mind. Save it. I’m not in the mood to hear your bullshit. If you that’s what you truly think of me, own it. Don’t change your story because you like getting your dick wet.”

 

He started, stung. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

 

She seemed momentarily abashed but her hurt was stronger. “Whatever. Let us idiotic children get out of your hair, then.” She turned and spoke over his protests. “Will you guys take me to my car? You can tell me how you proposed on the way because I, for one, am happy for you. Even if it’s stupid to be happy.”

 

Alice took Bella’s hand and they headed for the door, Edward trailing after them. They ignored Charlie’s repeated attempts to call them back. When, in desperation, he reached out to grasp Alice’s arm, she yanked it back, turning to glare at him with a look so menacing, he actually took a step backward. “Let us go.”

 

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

 

Her eyes sparked, and she stepped right up to him, poking him in the chest. “That is the pot calling the kettle black, Charlie Swan. There are a lot of things I can just brush off, but this isn’t one of them.”

 

She took a deep breath, her bravado falling a notch or two. He saw the tears in her eyes and felt lower than pond scum. “Bella and Edward are going to take me to my car. They’ll be back in twenty minutes, and I hope you can actually be rational by then, because you of all people should know what they need most is your love, even if you don’t like it.”

 

“And what about you?” he asked, his throat tight and his heart thudding painfully in his chest.

 

She huffed. “We’ll see,” she said and then got in the back of her brother’s Volvo.

 

Edward gave him a small, awkward smile as he started the car. “Sorry, Charlie,” he said, his voice quiet over the engine.

 

Charlie watched, his hands clenched in fists at his side, as the car got further away. When it was gone, he stumbled a few steps backward and sat down hard on his stoop, his head in his hands.

  
“Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to jessypt and barburella.
> 
> Welp. Charlie appears to be in the dog house… I mean, the day started out so well, him figuring out he was in love and getting him some but then it just all went to hell.
> 
> Damn.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Away we go!

Charlie sat in the living room with a tumbler of of whiskey, wondering how such a good day had gone straight to hell. He needed a reset. No. He needed an erase. Erase today so he didn’t have to remember his eighteen-year-old daughter was engaged.

 

Then again, if it meant he’d have to forget that morning with Alice, well he wasn’t giving that up for anything. Especially if it was going to be his last good memory with her.

 

He drained the rest of his drink and ran a hand over his eyes. There was an ache at the center of his chest that made him feel like he couldn’t take a deep breath. He remembered this feeling. It wasn’t the sort of thing anyone could forget. Like the world was going to end, like he was going to lose everything all over again.

 

“Dammit,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. He wasn’t nineteen anymore. Shouldn’t he have outgrown this dramatic flair? The world wasn’t going to end. Bella was going to come back, and she’d forgive him easily enough, and that was the most important thing.

 

Maybe it was because he knew she would forgive him that it didn’t feel like the most important thing. He rubbed absently at his shoulder as though he could scratch away the phantom itch. Dramatic or not, if he was being honest with himself, he was scared. He was scared and flashing back to the last time, when he’d lost everything and the only escape he could find from that kind of pain was from a razor blade.

 

He wondered if he’d made her feel like that. The thought made his stomach twist, and he had to suppress the urge to go running out the door after her. He might not have been successful if Edward’s Volvo hadn’t pulled up right then.

 

The boy didn’t come inside, and Charlie was grateful for that. He figured he had a lot of crow to eat, and it would be a little easier to start with Bella and work his way to his future son-in-law.

 

Christ.

 

Bella leaned in the driver’s side window and gave Edward a kiss before he drove off. She took a deep breath as if steeling herself before she headed up the steps to the front door. Charlie pushed the empty tumbler behind the lamp and sat up straighter, waiting with his elbows on his knees.

 

Neither of them spoke right away. His thoughts were still too scattered. It was times like these he didn’t feel very much like a dad, or at least, he didn’t feel like a good dad. Dads were supposed to be overflowing with certainty, wisdom, and, as Alice had pointed out, unconditional support. He was a wreck for multiple reasons, and he had no idea where to start.

 

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked finally. “You’ve never struck me as the type to get caught up in romantic ideas.”

 

Bella shuffled the few steps forward and sat gingerly on the edge of the couch facing him, her features rigid. “Was it a romantic idea that made you marry Mom?”

 

“We’re not talking about me and your mother right now, Bella,” he said, his tone tired and calm. “I just need to know if you’re sure.”

 

“No, Dad, answer me first. I don’t know how else to explain this, so just answer me. Or at least answer this question. Even though it didn’t work out, do you regret marrying Mom?”

 

Charlie rubbed his hands together, thinking it over. “No,” he said, realizing it for the first time himself.

 

He had to stop himself from reaching up to rub at his arm where his scars were.

 

For all the pain he’d suffered afterward, the debilitating depression that had driven him to extremes, he didn’t regret the whirlwind of his marriage. It wasn’t just Bella. Renee was already pregnant when they got married; He’d have had Bella with or without that little bit of paper.

 

They had been happy, even if it was only briefly, and Charlie couldn’t say he would trade those too few months for anything.

 

“No, I don’t regret marrying your mother at all.”

 

Bella nodded, a small smile tugging at her lips. “I’m not sure.” She huffed. “I have all these voices in my head. I know how young we are. We’re going to change, and I know I can’t guarantee we’ll change together. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, even when the couple aren’t stupid kids. I know all those things.”

 

She shrugged. “But I also know I won’t regret it. That I am sure of. I want to be married to him, and if it only lasts a few years, so what? It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

 

He grunted, wanting to argue, but… “You have a point.” He rubbed the palms of his hands on his jeans. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. Not that I don’t have my doubts about what you kids are doing, but that doesn’t give me a right to be disrespectful. You’re an adult, and Alice was right.” His heart panged at her name. “Just because I have reservations doesn’t mean you don’t have my support."

 

The tension went out of her body, and Bella surprised him by launching herself across the room into his arms. “Thanks, Dad. That means...everything.”

 

They talked a while longer. She and Edward didn’t intend to get married until the next summer, after they completed their sophomore year.

 

“Nothing changes, really. We still have all the same plans.” Her cheeks tinged pink, and she darted a look at him and away. “I don’t even know if I want to have kids ever, so…”

 

No change, she’d said. Because she and Edward were already…

 

Well, never mind.

 

"You have a good head on your shoulders, kid," he said. Then he rolled his eyes. "And that fiancé of yours treats you right. He's no slouch."

 

Bella looked bemused. "Thanks, Dad. That's high praise coming from you.” She straightened up and fixed him with a serious expression. “Now. Let’s talk about you. Girl problems, huh?” She was fighting a smile.

 

Charlie groaned. “I’m definitely not ready for this.”

 

Her grin got wider, but then she sobered. “I’m really glad you’re moving on with someone. Really. I was worried about you.”

 

“But?”

 

“No but. Not really. Alice just isn’t what I expected for you. You know, Phil is younger than Mom. Not as young as Alice, but that’s not really a big deal. Phil with Mom made sense.”

 

“But Alice and I don’t make sense?”

 

Bella pursed her lips, obviously considering her words. “She reminds me a lot of Mom, and that makes sense. There are a lot of great things about Mom and a lot of great things about Alice. And it’s not a bad thing…”

 

There were too many buts in this conversation, Charlie reflected, waving his hand to indicate she should come right out with it.

 

His daughter sighed. “This town isn’t big enough to hold her, Dad. She's getting better. You've helped her so much. I'm just worried you're going to get hurt when she picks herself up and dusts herself off. You like Forks.”

 

“Humph.” Charlie tapped his knee rapidly, trying to ignore the roil in his stomach. “That’s putting the cart before the horse anyway,” he muttered. “She might not come back.”

 

He didn’t want to think about that, so he answered Bella in an effort to distract himself from the rising sense of panic. “I think you’re on to something, though. I can’t say I’m sure of anything, and I know that about Alice. I knew that about Renee, too--that she couldn’t be happy here. That was part of my mistake--trying to force Renee into wanting to settle down here just because we had you. It seemed obvious to me back then, but look at you. She took you and moved you around a bit. You turned out all right.

 

“So I don’t know. I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I know I don’t regret it.” He took a deep breath because the next words were hard to say when he had no idea if he’d already lost her. “If it doesn’t work out, I won’t regret it.”

 

“Okay. Then we need to fix it.” Bella gave him a soft smile. “Alice is a tough cookie, but she was ostracized when she married Jasper. Well…she’s never really fit in, but people were kind of nasty about that in particular. If you’re her, uh...boyfriend, you’re supposed to be the one person in the world who doesn’t judge her. You hurt her pretty badly.”

 

Charlie grimaced. “I know.”

 

“Between Jessica and her mother, this is going to be interesting.” Bella shook her head. “You have to fix this, Dad. Today. People are nosy as hell. It isn’t any of their business, but they’re not going to see it that way.”

 

“I know,” he said again and fixed her with a bemused look. “Hey, which of us is the parent here?”

 

She put her hands on her hips. “It’s not my fault one of us actually learned the lesson if you can’t say nothing nice, don’t say anything at all.” She stood. “Come on. I’m going to help you. I’m going to distract Carlisle and Esme by telling them I’m marrying their son. You see if you can get Alice out of the house.

 

“Don’t worry, Dad. Alice is going to forgive you.” She shuddered. “God, that’s never not going to be weird. You know, it’s awkward enough when your parents date. I’m sure that’s just about as comfortable as you knowing I had a boyfriend. Remember that conversation?”

 

Charlie couldn’t help but chuckle. It had been a happy accident he’d been cleaning his gun when Edward introduced himself officially as Bella’s boyfriend.

 

“This is…” Bella waved her hands helplessly. “I kind of thought you were going to date Sue for a while.”

 

He raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t realized Bella had picked up on the connection he had with Sue shortly after her husband, one of Charlie’s best friends, died. But she’d had the same connection with Billy, and that was that.

 

“I’ll get used to it, I guess.” Bella blanched. “Oh, God. If you married her, she’d be my stepmother. That’s so weird.” She shook her head vigorously. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s go before I have a chance to think about this too hard.”

 

A few minutes later Charlie was lamenting the fact everything in Forks was so close. The Cullens’s house was technically outside of city limits, but even that was only a ten minute drive. He squirmed in his seat, nerves getting the better of him. A man his age should have been exempt from being in trouble.

 

“Maybe I should give her a little time to cool off,” he muttered out loud.

 

Bella turned away from the window to stare at him. “Don’t make me do this again.”

 

He turned away from the road briefly to glance at her. “Do what?”

 

“I already walked one parent through the ups and downs of an adult relationship. I could do it for Mom because you taught me how to take responsibility. You’re better at this than you think you are, Dad. You just haven’t had a chance to show it.”

 

Charlie stared out the window, not sure how to process that. He was equal parts proud and chagrined. It was something he knew and had often lamented, of course. He knew that Bella had been the adult in her and her mother’s relationship for a long time, but he hadn’t stopped to wonder where she got the capability. Bella hadn’t developed in a vacuum, after all. Though physically absent most of her life, Charlie wondered just how much of him was part of his daughter.

 

With that thought, something finally clicked in place. She was just as uncomfortable as he was with feelings, and she didn’t romanticize ideas like marriage. Yet here she was, engaged and happy. She was happy, he realized. What had made him uncomfortable about the way she acted around Edward was that she was different with him.

 

But how could he not understand that? He’d known Alice for years before all this, and while he’d always enjoyed her--who wouldn’t enjoy her bright, energetic presence--he couldn’t have predicted this. He was different with her, not because of her.

 

Like Edward and his daughter.

 

Bella sighed and nudged his shoulder. “There’s no trick to it. You’re good at straight forward. Just be honest, and you’ll be fine.”

 

Her words at least put walls around the anxiety that threatened to overwhelm him. His internal monologue was melodramatic, but that was probably normal. There was a reason big displays of emotion made him uncomfortable. They weren’t easy or pleasant to handle to say the least. He’d survive this like he’d survived everything else in his life, no matter what the outcome.

 

Still, all the rationalization in the world didn’t stop his heart from galloping when they pulled up to the Cullen house.

 

Alice was sitting on the steps waiting. Waiting for him. It wasn’t a coincidence. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, her expression pinched and her shoulders slumped. The wary nervousness in her expression matched the creepy-crawly thrill on his skin. He squirmed again in his seat.

 

When he got out of the car, she stood and went to stand in front of him. She was close enough that he could feel her body heat and yet far enough away that he missed her. He missed the feel of her in his arms. He’d all but forgotten his daughter was there too, walking to meet Edward who had appeared at the door when they pulled up. Charlie couldn’t have taken his eyes off Alice if he wanted to, and he definitely didn’t want to.

 

His throat was tight and dry as he offered her his hand. “Will you come with me?” he asked, the words coming out like gravel.

  
She breathed in through her nose, pressing her lips into a thin line. Charlie’s heart skipped a beat. But then she put her hand in his and stepped closer, dropping their joined hands between them. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m going to update this again asap, trust. My beautiful jessypt demands it. Ya know, it’s just hard to write sex at work. Hah!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: See. I told you there wouldn’t be much of a wait. True story. I was listening to a lecture about poverty in my social problems class and writing this at the same time. Hum.

They went back to his house as it was getting dark outside and there was no such thing as privacy at the Cullen house. Charlie opened his mouth several times only to close it again, not sure where to start.

 

He didn’t like being in trouble.

 

Beside him in the truck, Alice laughed, the sound quiet and gentle. “Don’t talk yet. It can wait for a few more minutes.” She didn’t sound angry.

 

Charlie’s cheek twitched. He knew what he needed to say and what he wanted to say. The problem was, he couldn’t concentrate to save his life. The words he needed sounded ridiculous in his head.

 

This was the problem with not talking things out. He wasn’t really sure where they’d stood before this whole incident. Bella had called him Alice’s boyfriend, but he didn’t know that he’d thought it through that far.

 

Something, he had said when this all began. He wanted something, but they’d never defined what that was. Most of the talking they’d done had been physical. There were those moments that were all about the enjoyment of being together, the pure pleasure of it when they laughed, nipped, and teased, when they rolled over and into each other.

 

Then there were those moments that were just more, when it meant more. He remembered waking in the early light of the morning, pulled into consciousness by Alice’s hands soft on his body. He remembered the slow kisses and the way they lay on their sides, their limbs tangling like vines. He remembered their easy rhythm, how it wasn’t about the pleasure and the ultimate release of climax. It was about the way she looked at him--her eyes filled with adoration and tenderness. It was about the way she touched him--the pads of her fingers tracing his face even as he moved inside her.

 

Who had needed definitions when they had all that?

 

But the world had proven once again it wouldn’t stay still. Maybe they’d both been happy with what they’d had, but Charlie was smart enough to recognize there was no going back. The cat was out of the bag, and they’d have to decide where to go from there. Publically.

 

Or not.

 

He gripped the steering wheel tighter.

 

By the time they got to the house and in the door, Charlie couldn’t stand not to touch her anymore. He took both her hands, pulling her to face him. She stiffened, but she didn’t yank her hands away. In fact, her fingers curled around his. The action gave him some hope the world wasn’t about to end.

 

Right. He was a rational adult, and he could do the rational adult thing.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was more raw than he would have liked, but that wasn’t important. “I shouldn’t have said that to Bella, and I didn’t mean it.”

 

She sighed and melted against him, pulling her hands from his so she could wrap them behind his neck. “I know.”

 

Charlie folded his arms around her, holding her tightly against him. For the first time in several hours, he took a deep breath.

 

“It was a rude thing to say, but you were right that I overreacted,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry. It was jarring. You’ve understood everything about me and you’ve never judged me before.”

 

He pulled back so he could look her in the eyes. “I’m not judging you now.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That was what my parents said. Well, it was one of the things they said when I told them. But after Renee left me, I thought they were right.”

 

“They weren’t.”

 

He grunted but didn’t press the issue. “The point is, you’re not me. Bella isn’t me or her mother either. It’s not the same situation. I’m sorry.”

 

She smiled at that, but it wasn’t an unburdened grin. “I forgive you,” she said.

 

“Mhmm.” He wound his arms around her waist and pulled her closer still. “But what else is wrong?”

 

He wanted her to laugh and tell him he was paranoid, but she ducked her head instead and sighed. “Jasper used to be able to do that. He always knew when there was something else.”

 

She disentangled herself from his arms and paced a few steps away, hunching in on herself. “It made me question, you know? Charlie, I’m a realistic person, and I know you. There’s no way you think I’m perfect, because I’m not. No one is, but I’m…”

 

As she paced, she began to wring her hands together, staring at the floor instead of him. “I know who I am. Those bouts of hyperactivity--I know they’re a cover as well as you do. I want to be a normal person, but I’m not. My father murdered my mother. He hated me so much for remembering he beat me half to death. I did get married at eighteen. To my foster brother. And I had to make the decision to terminate my husband’s life support at twenty-two. I mean… These things don’t happen to normal people, Charlie. You’re a grown man with your own house and a grown-up daughter and the respect of the whole town. I’m not the kind of woman a guy like you--”

 

“Alice.” He caught her face between his hands. The movement stilled her rush of words and her frenetic pacing. Her eyes were watery, but when he tilted her chin up to look at him, she made a visible effort to be brave. “Alice,” he said again, running his thumbs over her high cheekbones. “I love you.”

 

She stared at him, her mouth tugging up and down, up and down, and lifted a trembling hand to his against her cheek. The tears that had been welling in her eyes spilled over, and her lips quivered. “I don’t understand why.”

 

He laughed. Not because it was funny; it wasn’t. He knew her words were born of the episode of self-loathing he’d inadvertently set off. She felt ugly, that particularly malicious brand of hideousness that twisted her insides rather than her beautiful face.

 

No, he laughed because there were so many reasons why he loved her, he didn’t know where to start. Her complete obliviousness to how amazing she was shocked him. Mostly though, he had to laugh because he loved her, and he had the distinct impression she could be his.

 

Right then it didn’t matter that he wasn’t good at words. It didn’t matter that displays of emotion usually made him uncomfortable. Making her feel better was way more important than any of that.

 

He leaned down press a tender kiss at her crown and answered her question. “Because you loved your foster brother so much, you went out of your way to distract an old man like me so he and Bella could spend more time together.”

 

He kissed her forehead. “Because you look at disasters like my kitchen and my garage.” And me, he didn’t say. “And you see what they can be.”

 

Her eyelids fluttered closed as he kissed one. “Because I like your hyperactive fits.” Then the other. “And I like that you like power tools.”

 

She shook in his arms, her lips pressed so tightly together in an effort to maintain control, they’d gone white.

 

Sometimes hearing good things about yourself could be physically painful, he thought. She gave her head a minute shake, as though she was trying to shake his words away.

 

With a gentle pressure at her chin, he tilted her head up to brush a light kiss to the tip of her nose. “Just one of the things you’ve been through could have broken you.”

 

“It did,” she whispered.

 

“It didn’t. You’re strong and amazing and I love you.”

 

Alice broke then and fell apart right in front of him. Her shoulders hunched in on themselves, and her small form shuddered. The instant Charlie pulled her down on his recliner with him, she curled up into as little a shape she could manage while still being pressed against him. Her hands clenched in fists in his shirt, hanging on for dear life as she cried.

 

Charlie didn’t try to calm her. He didn’t say anything. He only sat with his arms around her, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head. It didn’t shock him. He knew she wasn’t okay. Her depression was a part of her--a big part for the time being. He’d been expecting her to hit a crying jag for a while now.

 

Part of the reason he’d really hated therapy was the crying jags, each of which had hit him with the violence of an exploding star. There was never a good enough reason for it, in his estimation. He remembered vividly writhing until he found himself curled up in a ball on the living room floor, wracked with sobs and unable to pick himself up off the floor no matter how much he snarled out loud in the empty house to stop being pathetic. The memory chafed, but the idea he could be there for Alice, to hold her as her universe imploded, healed something in him.

 

Minutes went by before Alice calmed at all. For a while after that, she hiccuped through hitched breaths, sniffling. Her death grip on his shirt loosened and then fell slack.

 

“Ugh. I’m sorry,” she said between gasps. “God, I’m so fucked up. This is not how you’re supposed to react when someone says they love you.” She darted her eyes to him and away a few times before she could hold his gaze, and even then she looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. This is gross.”

 

He shook his head and kissed her anyway, his hand cupped to her cheek. Her skin was salty from her tears, but her lips were soft and wonderful as always. He was glad he could still kiss her. He was still better at showing what he felt, and he was dead set on driving that point home, salty kisses or not.

 

She made a small noise of protest at first, like she might have preferred to let the splotchy pallor of tears fade from her face before she thought about making out. But just as quickly she sighed against his mouth and began to kiss him back. She returned each of his tiny kisses, tentative at first but with mounting depth as the heaviness of the evening fell away. She shifted on his lap in increments until she’d straddled him, one hand curved around his neck and the other spread flat against his chest. He splayed his hands over her back, liking the way he could cover nearly the whole expanse with his fingers wide.

 

His hands fell gradually from her back to her sides to her waist. When his fingers slipped up under her shirt, playing at the hemline of her pants, she broke their kiss with an adorable squeak. “Hold…” She stumbled over her words, breathless from their exertions. “Hold on a second.”

 

Alice sat back, pulling her phone from her pocket. Charlie furrowed his brow, lost. “What are you doing?”

 

“Texting Bella,” she said, her fingers flying over the keys.

 

“What? Why?”

 

When she raised her head, Charlie was knocked breathless at the sight. Her eyes, though red from her tears, were lit again with that mixture of adoration and mischievousness. Oh god, that look. It was the type that went straight to his cock.

 

She leaned in to peck at his lips. “I’m telling her to stay with my brother tonight because, Chief Swan, I think we’ve traumatized your daughter enough for one day.” She pecked at him again and dropped her tone to a sultry rumble. “And don’t you know?” She tossed her phone in the general direction of the couch, raking her fingernails down his chest. “Make-up sex is kind of wild, and I don’t think we’re going to make it as far as the bedroom.”

 

His cock twitched, and he groaned. He blinked at her a few times, his tongue tied, and then ducked his head to rest against her chest as though it could hide his blush and desire. She laughed, stroking her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck.

 

Alice got up then and pulled him to his feet with her. She pushed up onto her tiptoes, put her lips to the space just below his ear and began to suck and nibble lightly. Charlie made a noise that should have embarrassed him, but he found he was quickly losing the ability to think. He tugged at her shirt, and she fumbled at the button of his jeans.  

 

They shed clothes in between increasingly desperate kisses. Alice pushed, and Charlie fell back onto the couch. She was on him quickly, her hands between them, stroking his length. His groan was drowned against her mouth, and his fingers dug into her sides. The bump and grind of her body meeting with his had him in a state faster than he could blink.

 

There was no room for rational thought. Whatever was happening between them was louder than thought. Need. Impulse. Tactile sensation.

 

He actually whimpered when she lowered herself down on him, inch by inch of him disappearing into slick heat. He tilted his head, his lips breathing hot air in an open mouthed kiss at her neck. He dragged his teeth across her skin, living for the tiny noises she made.

 

“Charlie.”

 

It took ages for it to register that she hadn’t called or moaned his name. She’d spoken to get his attention, and that was almost too much of a feat for his sex-addled brain to handle when he was buried so deep inside her. “Hmm?” he asked, unable to articulate a more eloquent response when he was using his mouth for more pressing things.

 

She put her hands to his face, raising his head up. He stared, muddled and somewhat confused about the break in their fervor.

 

The look on her face was shy but intense. “I…” She swallowed hard, but she smiled. “I love you too.”

 

He could tell the words cost her something to say. They couldn’t have been easy, even if they weren’t a surprise to him. If anything, the fact he knew she couldn’t say those words without giving up something she held dear and yet she’d given them to him anyway made her statement more profound. It cleared the haze from his mind and stopped his rhythm mid-thrust.

 

Raising a hand to her cheek, he ran his thumb over her lips, his eyes never leaving hers. Her smile spread wider, the fever of lust replaced now by the deep love they’d fallen into. They’d fallen down the rabbit hole holding hands to find there was a strange but wonderful world waiting for them at the bottom.

 

He took her lips in a tender kiss and began to move inside her again. It was strange how their mutual admission had laid a weight on them he could feel with every caress, every kiss, and yet, at the same time, he had never felt so light. The joy that bubbled in him at the idea she loved him could have sent him rocketing into the sky, untethered by such a paltry thing as gravity, but the knowledge made what they were doing more. Different.

 

Different even from that morning--had it really only been that morning--when he realized he loved her. Sharing that love…

  
She was about to send his world into a tailspin, but god. Good god. What a ride it was going to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: My thanks to barburella and jessypt! 
> 
> The end is in sight! We have a few more things to deal with, but I can’t see that taking more than two or three chapters.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So any of you reading New Girl and/or Angel Is A Centerfold, do me a favor. Send me some good vibes. I’ve been so wrapped up in my Ofics this week, Edward and Bella aren’t speaking to me, and it’s driving me insane.

There was a definite advantage to their relationship being out in the open.

 

Charlie made his way through his room as quietly as he could, getting ready for work. The lights were off, so he fumbled a bit, but it was worth it not to wake Alice. She wasn’t deeply asleep. He could tell because every once in a while, the quiet of pre-dawn morning was interrupted by her soft sighs and snuffles. He stood still and watched her as he buttoned his shirt.

 

She was laying on her belly, her arms up and around her pillow.The blankets had fallen down, and the sight of her bare back was incredibly tantalizing. He wanted nothing more than to climb back into bed and trail kisses down her spine.

 

He stilled, warring with himself because there was no reason he should bother her, especially when he was just going to have to leave in a few more minutes.

 

Desire won out. He sat on the bed, softly because he didn’t really want to wake her. He let his fingertips skim from her shoulder to the center of her back and down. The idea he could do this, that he had permission to see her like this and touch her, that she was his. It was something he didn’t know if he’d ever fully wrap his head around.

 

Alice inhaled sharply when his fingers reached a spot he knew was sensitive. She rolled over, blinking sleepy eyes at him. When she smiled, his lips turned up automatically in response. She reached a hand up and tugged him down to her for a kiss. It was a lazy kiss, and it was only a few seconds before her hand went slack and drifted back to her side. She was asleep again. He wondered if she’d ever really woken up.

 

Charlie pulled the blankets up to her shoulders--the morning was chilly, after all. He cupped his hand briefly to her cheek and kissed her once more before he convinced himself to leave.

 

Out in the hallway, his eyes strayed over to Bella’s room. The door was closed, but he knew his daughter was there. And that was the best advantage to his relationship being out in the open. Both the women he loved were safe under his roof.

 

For now, anyway. Soon enough Bella would be a married woman, and Alice…

 

Well, he was going to enjoy it while it lasted.  

 

Charlie had hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with the rumor mill until he was out and about town, but no such luck. He’d barely walked in the door of the station before his officers, his male officers, were all over him, thumping his back in congratulations.

 

“Didn’t know you had it in you, Chief.”

 

“You cradle robbing son of a gun.”

 

“You still got it, Chief.”

 

“I bet she--”

 

“Now hold on,” Charlie said, shaking them off. “All of you shut up. What’s wrong with you? You’re all married or near enough.” He gestured at Officer Conner who was engaged. “I hope you respect your wives better than this.”

 

Most of them looked shamefaced, but Charlie heard one scoff. He could have bet who it was. Officer James Hunter had never really liked him, and he wasn’t afraid of showing it, boss or not. “You really think you’re one to lecture us on respect now, sir?” He put a sarcastic drawl on the last word. “She’s your kid’s friend, isn’t she? Peeking in on your daughter’s slumber parties, were you, Chief?”

 

Charlie had to remind himself not even the chief of police could get away with assaulting an officer in a room full of other officers. The fact that Bella and Alice had had sleepovers chafed. Oh, sure, it had been Alice inviting Bella over to her own apartment, and the real purpose of them was to let Bella spend the night with Edward--he was a cop, not an idiot--but those were semantics.

 

“How about instead of talking about things you don’t understand and that aren’t any of your business, you go out and do your job?” Charlie said, somehow managing to keep his tone even. “Or was it someone else supposed to be out on patrol right now?”

 

Irritation lit James’s features, but he took a respectful step backward and nodded his head. “Chief,” he said and headed out the door.

 

When he was gone, Charlie took a spare minute to glance around at his other officers, glaring them down. Of course, they said nothing, and he stormed into his office, shutting the door with a little more force than was necessary. He was glad he used Mondays to catch up on paperwork.

 

After about an hour of aggressively shuffling papers around his desk, Charlie sat back. His irritation had eased up some, enough at least that he wasn’t considering a mass firing. He rubbed his eyes, trying to let go of the arguments that had been running through his head on repeat. It all boiled down to the same point: none of this was anyone’s business but his and Alice’s.

 

The rest of the day passed slowly. He wanted to meet Alice for lunch, but she had a few drop-in clients. He wondered if it was paranoid thinking on his part that perhaps the clients had come looking for gossip.

 

Before he could figure out a tactful way to ask, someone knocked on his office door. “Come in.”

 

The last person he expected came into his office. Esme Cullen. His stomach twisted, and he stood, automatically amending his previous thought. If there were two people in the world who had any business prying into his relationship with Alice, it was Esme and Carlisle.

 

He greeted her and pulled out a chair, closing the door to his office again. It was all he could do to keep himself from running a hand through his hair. All of it was ridiculous. It was like being eighteen again, sitting in Renee’s living room, waiting for her parents to get home so they could tell them together she was pregnant.

 

Charlie cleared his throat. “Did she tell your or did you find out?”

 

Her lip twitched up slightly, and she fixed him with a gimlet eye. “I went to the bank this morning.”

 

Charlie blanched. “Aw, hell.”

 

Esme smiled then, though it was a small one. “Mrs. Stanley has always had a very creative mind.” Her eyes found his. “I would have preferred not to find out that way.”

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. He meant it. “Alice didn’t want to take away from Bella and Edward’s news.” His cheek twitched. “She thought this weekend should have been about them.”

 

“Yes, well. There is that. I would have thought nothing could have distracted me from the idea our kids are getting married. They’re so young.”

 

“I’d wondered if you’d be on my side about that.”

 

“I couldn’t love your daughter more if she was my own, Charlie, but… Well.” She huffed, and her nose crinkled. She shook a finger at him. “Don’t try to change the subject. We’ll get to that.”

 

Esme looked off, wringing her hands in an absent gesture. Charlie could have said a lot of things, but he didn’t want to assume. He’d already stuck his foot in his mouth enough for the week at least. He didn’t want to guess at what her problem might be.

 

Finally, she sighed and straightened up. “Charlie, we’ve known each other for years now, and you’re a good man. You know I believe you’re a good man. I…” She huffed, obviously searching for the right words. “I’ve often wondered if you… Your life seemed like it might be lonely. Sad, maybe.

 

“Alice has a unique gift of bringing lightness into people’s lives. It's just her enthusiasm, her passion. It’s infectious, and I’m sure it can be alluring…”

 

Charlie stood up and began unbuttoning his shirt.

 

“What are you doing?” Esme asked, her eyes gone comically wide.

 

In all honesty, he wasn’t sure. He definitely wasn’t sure if it would work, but he needed to show her so she might understand. No matter what the personal cost, she needed to know. Because he did understand the worry of a parent for their child.

 

“You’ll have to bear with me a second,” he said, pleased that his voice didn’t waver as he shrugged out of his shirt. “The uniform isn’t conducive to dramatic reveals.”

 

He took a deep breath and rolled up the sleeve of his undershirt.

 

“I-- Oh, my.” Whatever Esme had been about to say, she cut off, staring at his scars. “Are those…” Her eyes darted up to his and back to the scars, and she swallowed thickly.

 

“I did it to myself, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, surprised his voice was calm though his mouth was dry and his stomach churned sickeningly. He began to put his shirt back on. “I know where her energy comes from. I understand why it exists. It’s how she copes.”

 

He sat down across from her, clutching his hands on his lap to try to stop them from shaking. “You didn’t ask, but you should know that I know.” He touched his shoulder, rubbing self-consciously. “It isn’t the same. It isn’t nearly the same, but it’s enough that I understand. I’m not being careless with her.” He forced himself to look her in the eyes. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

 

Her face was pinched with a sadness Charlie hated, especially when she was looking at his arms--covered now. He wanted to tell her not to feel sorry for him. He’d felt sorry enough for himself, and he’d carved his own skin because he was a stupid asshole. But he held his tongue, knowing deep within himself he had been hurt and sick. It was one of the things that made him good for Alice--that he understood what it was to be hurt and sick. And seeing his struggles echoed in hers, he was coming to accept he really hadn’t been pathetic.

 

Esme took a deep breath, her eyes watery as she looked back at him. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

 

“For what?”

 

“I thought…” She cocked her head. “I’m not even sure what I thought. There’s just so much hurt in the world. I can’t stand that so much of it has found my daughter. I can’t stand the injustice of it. There isn’t much I wouldn’t give if only she never had to hurt again. It’s… Especially with Mrs. Stanley putting absurd stories in my head, it was hard to see past all the ways this could be just the next tragedy in her life, and how many more can she be expected to suffer without...ending it?”

 

She gave her head a shake, as though trying to push that thought out of her head. “When she came to stay with us, I told her that as much pain and hurt and bad as there is in the world, there’s even more joy and happiness and good.”

 

Esme took a deep, steadying breath and put her hand out, palm up, on the desk. Hesitantly, Charlie put his hand in hers, and she squeezed his fingers tightly. “Thank you for showing me that. I know it wasn’t easy, and if you’ll do that for her, then I’ll trust this can be one of the good things.”

 

Her lips quirked upward, and she sat back, her hands on her lap. “You didn’t shoot my son for talking your daughter into marrying him, so that does add a point in your favor. Thanks for that.”

 

He couldn’t help his chuckle at the startling turn in conversation. He knew better than to think they were done. It was more likely that he’d given her enough to chew on, and there was bound to be a conversation in his future that included both Carlisle and, of course, Alice. But for now, he slipped from his role of questionable boyfriend to slightly dismayed parent easily enough.

 

“I know my daughter. Your son couldn’t lead her anywhere she didn’t want to go.”

**~0~**

Their texts that afternoon were short.

 

3:07 PM Charlie: So your mother just left here…

3:08 PM Alice: Oh no. Oh crap. She went to you first?

3:09 PM Alice: Did you just send me to voicemail

3:09 PM Charlie: Business call. Don’t worry. We’ll talk about it after work.

3:10 PM Alice: Oh, sure. Leave me to wonder when I can’t call her. Ugh.

4:32 PM Alice: #$()*#%(_&(@#&@(*)#&_@(#&@#

4:33 PM Alice: Don’t call. I’m fine. I’m going to your house. See you in ten.

 

After that, Charlie abandoned his paperwork mid-sentence and headed straight home. He tried to tell himself not to assume, but he couldn’t help trying to imagine what might have prompted that response from her. Surely she’d talked to her mother by then, but he somehow doubted Esme would have had that effect.

 

When he pulled up, he was almost surprised to find Bella was home too. Of course. Why wouldn’t she be? The idea made him more frustrated than it should have. Almost always since she’d come to live with him, he walked in the door from work to find the smell of dinner in the air. Today wasn’t an exception. He found Bella in the kitchen.

 

“Hey, Dad,” she said, looking up from her pan to spare him a welcoming smile. Then her eyes tightened, and she nodded her head upward. “She’s upstairs, and she needs you.”

 

Sometimes he felt like hugging his daughter tightly just because she was so understanding about this whole situation. He was glad now that she knew. He hadn’t liked lying to her by omission, and she could be a friend Alice desperately needed. “Thanks,” he said instead, and he hurried up to his room.

 

She was tucked into his bed on her side. The only way he could tell she was awake was because she reached behind her and turned down the covers in an obvious plea for him to join her.

 

His stomach began to twist in earnest when she didn’t look at him. He rid himself of his lumpy cop’s clothes, stripping down to undershirt and pants as quickly as he could and sat on the bed behind her.

 

“It wasn’t bad,” she said, still not turning to look at him. Her voice was a wisp of sound. “It just got to me, but I don’t want to talk about it yet. I don’t want to talk at all.”

 

He took her initial invitation and laid down behind her. The way her body tensed as he got closer, he thought he understood what was going on with her.

 

When you felt hideous and maimed, kind words could hurt and, he imagined, so could soft touches.

 

Who, he wondered. Who had made her feel that way? What could they have said?

 

But he pushed the anger away for the moment because the woman in his bed was much more important than his desire to throttle Janet Stanley. He edged closer to Alice, resting a hand on her waist first, testing. Sure enough, her breath hitched.

 

He stroked his fingers up and down her side in a light motion over her shirt. When she began to relax a bit, he both snuggled closer and pulled her back against him. He nuzzled his nose against her neck and kissed her shoulder, hoping she could hear what he was trying to say.

 

She was beautiful.

 

Eventually, her ragged breath evened out and she shifted, turning in his arms. Her eyes were tired, but there was a spark in them when she smiled at him. “I love you,” she whispered, and she kissed him.

  
He wrapped himself around her as much as he could, hitching his leg over hers to draw her even closer as he kissed her back. He didn’t give her room to doubt that he loved her, and she was beautiful, and whatever they’d said to her, it didn’t matter. They didn’t know her. He did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to Barburella and jessypt. For some reason, Charlie and Alice are speaking to me even though Edward and Bella seem to be mad at me! Go figure.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m not kidding...they won’t shut up. It’s driving me insane. Don’t they understand I have many other fics on the stove?

Alice was right that first day. What the ladies at the shop had said to her wasn’t bad. It was the double talk ladies were good at, the subtle barbs and cutting remarks said with a sugar sweet smile. Charlie thought it spoke very highly of Alice that she’d managed to keep doing their hair. He would have accidentally cut a big chunk of it off.

 

But their quasi-innocent chatter had triggered her memories of high school and the whispers that went on behind her back. From there, it was a domino effect to a downward spiral.

 

There were good days and bad days. People tended not to bother Charlie. He got the odd sideways glance from parents of Bella’s friends, but the most he got was an overly-friendly, “You seem like you’re in a good mood these days, Chief.”

 

And really, all things considered, it wasn’t bad for Alice. At least, it wasn’t anything more dramatic than busybodies gossiping within earshot. Most of the time, she could roll her eyes and laugh it off. Sometimes though, it got under her skin and sent her reeling. They made her feel ugly--wrong.

 

One day, Charlie came home to find her zoned out at the kitchen table, staring at her wrists, plans for what she wanted to do to the bathroom forgotten in front of her. He knew exactly what she was doing, what she was feeling.

 

The urge to cut was an intense one.

 

Alice started when he sat down in the chair kitty-corner from her. The guilty look that flashed across her features was all the confirmation he needed. She flipped her hands over so they rested palms down. “Hey, you’re home. I didn’t realize it was that late,” she said, her words a little too quick to come off as nonchalant.

 

“Mmhm.” After a brief moment’s hesitation, Charlie reached for the thin red Sharpie that laid on the table. He took her hand and drew it toward him, palm up. When she made an instinctive move to draw her hand back, he held it firm, flicking his eyes up to meet hers. He smiled, and some of the tension seemed to drain out of her when she smiled back.

 

Charlie touched the Sharpie to her skin and began to draw. To her credit, she didn’t protest. She tilted her head, watching him for a few seconds before she asked, “What the heck are you doing?”

 

That was a question he didn’t want to answer straight. Then again, the circular route was just a touch embarrassing, and it involved his ex-wife. He was pretty sure there was some rule about discussing good times with your ex-wife with your current girlfriend, but he didn’t think Alice was the type to get upset about it. She knew where she stood, and she was always curious about Charlie’s life.

 

“This is how I met Renee,” he said, concentrating on his task rather than looking up. “Well, I knew her the way you know everyone in this town. She’d come to school the year before. I knew her name, that she was from California, and she was popular. We had… let’s see. I think it was Government together. The teacher was boring as hell, but he would give us fifteen minutes of free time if we got through the lesson. Renee would do this to some of the other kids.”

 

“It’s like henna,” Alice said, sounding slightly mesmerized as she watched the pattern he was tracing from her wrist across her palm.

 

“Whatever that is,” he said with a shrug. “She used to have a box of gel pens. Pretty pastel colors. The girls went nuts over it.

 

“Anyway, I guess I used to doodle in my notebook when I was bored. Not drawings. Just shapes. Lines. One day, Renee came to sit in the empty seat in front of me. She put her hand on my notebook and said, ‘Do me.’”

 

“How forward of her.”

 

Charlie chuckled, and he lifted his head to give her a pointed look. He was was pleased to see her smile was gentle, her eyes not as haunted as they’d been when he walked in the door. He turned her hand over and resumed his work. He picked up the black sharpie and made a final touch.

 

When he loosened his grip, Alice held her hand out in front of her, admiring his work. He’d drawn a spiderweb on her palm, its tendrils wrapping around her wrist. Two tiny black roses were caught up in the lines. The spider rested on her ring finger, hugging it like a ring.

 

It was a coping technique he’d been taught years ago by his therapist. Part of the reason he cut was exactly what he’d told Alice months before. When you felt ugly, clean, unmarred skin was obscene to look at. Sometimes it helped to mark your skin in other, less damaging ways.

 

She knew what he’d done. He could see it in her eyes. She wrapped both of her hands around one of his and squeezed. “What did you draw for Renee?”

 

His cheeks heated. “Stars. You know, the kind that are really glorified asterisks,” he said, his tone gruff. “You know how it works. Someone puts you on the spot and suddenly you can’t think of a thing.”

 

Alice grinned. “That’s a sweet image. Baby Charlie Swan, flustered because a pretty girl is all up in his business.” She ran her fingers underneath his chin, tickling him. “You blush even worse than Bella, you know that?”

 

He let silence fall over them for one-two-three beats before he lunged at her. Alice, however, was quicker than that. She squeaked as she shot up off her seat, toppling the chair in the process as she ran for the living room, Charlie hot on her tail.

 

Ever graceful, she hurtled the loveseat, putting it between them. She feinted left, but Charlie was on to her tricks. He darted right around the loveseat and caught her around the waist as she tried to scale the couch. Off balance, he ended up falling back onto the couch with Alice in his arms. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but he was laughing anyway. They both were.

 

He reached up to push her hair out of her face, thinking she was beautiful even though she was flushed red and panting. There was tenderness in her expression as she looked down at him, and he was about to kiss her when someone cleared their throat.

 

Both of them looked over to find Bella in the doorway, her arms crossed, her expression mock-stern. “Uh, hi. Excuse me? Who are you and what have you done with my father? My father is kind of sedate. He’s not some overgrown goofball.”

 

He arched his eyebrows, resting his hands on Alice’s back, somehow not embarrassed enough to let her go. “How long have you been standing there?”

 

“Long enough to see Alice training for American Ninja Warrior.”

 

Alice gasped, smacking Charlie’s chest in revelation. “That’s it. I’ve found my calling.” She looked down at him. “So how do you feel about turning your garage into a training center?”

 

He pretended to consider it. “Hey, you’d be tearing down your own hard work so whatever floats your boat.”

 

She grinned and leaned in to kiss him.

 

“Ugh. That’s unsettling,” Bella said, not really meaning it. “I change my mind about coming home if I have to watch you making out with my dad.”

 

Alice broke their kiss and waved her hand at Bella. “Sure. You can go back to making out with my brother.”

 

“That isn’t nearly the same thing!” Bella called through the screen door. She was already on the porch. “Carlisle and Esme want you to come to dinner in an hour.”

 

Charlie probably should have called her back, but he couldn’t say he was disappointed when he heard the door to his daughter’s truck close. He closed his eyes, pressing up into Alice’s kiss, perfectly content to stay right where he was.

**~0~**

 

Finding himself on the receiving end of an alpha male handshake of death from Carlisle Cullen was an interesting experience. There was a split second before his usual, welcoming smile when Carlisle fixed him with a stare hard enough to put the fear of God into him. That split second was all he needed. Charlie heard him as loudly as if he’d spoken.

 

You hurt my child, you’ll answer to me.

 

He couldn’t say he blamed the man, but like Esme, Carlisle seemed willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After the initial warning glare they were all able to talk like the friends they were over dinner.

 

It was the same and yet it was different. He’d always been friends with the Cullens, but the atmosphere was off. Not in a bad way. It just wasn’t what he was used to.

 

With a start, he realized he was being adopted. Just like that.

 

He’d seen it happen with Bella. He remembered being glad for her, that she’d found a place to belong. He’d never been able to give her a family. Not a loving one anyway.

 

This family was warm. He’d always known that, but now he was being invited to sit by the fire. Not even invited just...accepted.

 

That was a unique experience. Renee’s parents had been just as cold to him as his own if not colder. With good reason, of course, but still.

 

Alice’s squeeze to his knee drew his attention, and he looked over to her. She smiled at him and threaded their fingers together under the table. With his realization fresh in his mind, it struck him that they were more alike than he thought.

 

He’d been alone for a long time.

**~0~**

It was late before conversation had finally dwindled. By that time, Carlisle and Charlie were alone in the Cullen’s living room. Carlisle had poured him a shot of fine whiskey, and they sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, sipping.

 

Carlisle looked down at his glass and sighed. “Alice and Jasper came to us about the same time,” he said, apropos of nothing and everything at once. “They were just so damaged. Jasper…”

 

Charlie saw a look of brief agony written on Carlisle’s features. Just like with Alice there wasn’t any room to doubt. This was a father who’d lost his son, and it hurt. Jasper’s name alone hurt. Carlisle took a deep breath, polishing off the whiskey before he continued. He smiled wryly, still looking down. “Jasper was a pain in the ass.” He chuckled. “He tested me. Good god how he tested me. He was rowdy and disrespectful. He got in fights at school. He started shoplifting.” He looked up at Charlie. “You remember that one.”

 

“I do.” Charlie rubbed the back of his neck. He’d never had much contact with Jasper

Whitlock, but he had dragged him--fifteen then--home to Carlisle and Esme once with a warning next time it would be juvie for sure.

 

Carlisle nodded and rubbed a hand over his face. “It got pretty bad. He was always in my face, yelling. And then he got physical.” He swallowed hard. “See, as it turned out, he was going crazy waiting for me to hit him. Or for us to send him away. Our caring for him, loving him… it was physically painful. Someone had convinced him he was bad, that he didn’t deserve love.

 

“But we saw him. Just the way he was when he thought we weren’t looking--alone in his room with his guitar.” He smiled. “Or with Edward. Emmett didn’t have time for his little brother then, but Jasper was so patient. And he never let Edward see him act up. That was something he put on himself, by the way. We never said anything to him. Then the way he was with Alice…”

 

Carlisle poured them both another shallow shot before he continued. He shook his head, smiling slightly. “They wouldn’t let us adopt them. We wanted to, but they asked us not to. Maybe it was because they had already adopted each other.”

 

He paused a few seconds, gathering his thoughts. “When they came home married, I thought that they’d come through their difficult childhoods only to destroy their lives. I was angry that we worked so hard, together, to help them, and they were just going to throw it all away.”

 

“I understand that to an extent,” Charlie said before he could help it.

 

“Yes, well. Believe me, if it hadn’t been for Alice and Jasper, Edward and Bella might have gotten a much different response to their news. But if Alice and Jasper taught me anything, it’s that I have no talent at all in predicting the future. They were doing well. The world didn’t end.” His lip tugged down at one corner. “At least, not because they were together and not because they got married.”

 

It was the second time in a week he’d had someone point out even mistakes didn’t mean destruction. Rationally, Charlie knew they were all right, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He was dealing with the idea his daughter was getting married, but it wasn’t a comfortable thought yet.

 

“Look, Charlie. The thing is, after Jasper died, I had no idea how to help Alice. She wouldn’t let us try. But when she came back to us after being with you, the last thing I expected was for her to come back happy. She’s coping, and after everything she’s been through, that’s amazing.”

 

Charlie was already shaking his head. “That’s all her. I didn’t do anything.”

 

Carlisle looked at him with such sincerity in his eyes, it shook Charlie to the core. “Yes, you did. We’re not meant to be islands. Humans, I mean. You helped her, and I’m thanking you for that.”

 

Choked with a sudden well of emotion, Charlie nodded, a rough jerk of his head.

 

“I don’t know what it means to you.” He chuckled. “And frankly, it’s very weird to be saying this to my son’s future father-in-law--we sat next to each other at our kids’ choir concert last year, for christ’s sake.”

 

Charlie felt his cheek twitch. “Yeah,” he muttered under his breath. It was strange.

 

“Well, in any event. You have our blessing. Mine and Esme’s.”

 

“It’s, uh…” Charlie huffed, rolling his eyes inwardly at his stumbling. “Thank you. I... Thank you.”

 

Carlisle raised his glass. “So here’s to not being able to predict the future. For all our kids’ sake.”

 

Not being able to predict the future. Charlie wouldn’t have ever thought he’d be happy to drink to that. Typically speaking, he enjoyed the predictability of his future.

  
He clinked Carlisle’s glass with his and they both did their shots together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to Barburella and jessypt. I’m thinking two or three chapters left, folks. Weee.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Disclaimer. I know nothing about ocean fishing so… sorry if anyone out there does. ;)

“So, I don’t get it.”

 

Charlie had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the next words out of Billy Black’s mouth. The fact that he’d waited until Sue took Alice with her to the other side of the boat to chat and put the sandwiches together didn’t bode well. He looked at his friend and raised an eyebrow.

 

“I mean, she’s pretty,” Billy said. Then he frowned. “And young. She’s pretty young.”

 

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” Charlie asked, deadpan. His hackles were raising, and he was trying to tell himself not to overreact.

 

He and Alice had been getting used to being a couple out in the open. They’d been out to dinner several times and had held hands in public--all very risque if some of the incredulous stares were anything to go by.

 

Now they were spending the day fishing with Sue and Billy. Charlie figured it wouldn’t do him any good to assume Billy was going to say something stupid.

 

“She’s my daughters’ age,” Billy said. “It’s... weird. You saw them grow up. If it had been one of them--”

 

“Alice isn’t your daughter.” He didn’t like the implication--as though he’d been looking at Alice like that when she was growing up.

 

“I just never pictured you as one to go through a midlife crisis.”

 

“BIlly, for Christ’s sake. I’m not old enough to be going through a midlife crisis. This didn’t happen because she’s young.”

 

“She was a teenager three years ago.”

 

“Yeah, well. Three years ago, your girlfriend was your best friend’s wife. Things change.”

 

Billy grunted, but thankfully, he dropped the subject as Alice and Sue wandered back. Alice sat beside him, putting a paper plate on his lap.

 

“There. I think doing domestic duty should exempt me from having to catch a fish.” She smirked and kissed the tip of his nose.

 

“You don’t like fishing?” Sue asked.

 

Alice leaned against Charlie, but she turned her head to look at Sue. “The fishing I don’t mind. I like the catching part. It’s the frantic wriggling, slimey scale part that gets me.” She gave an exaggerated shudder.

 

“Uh huh. Well, then I’d say you have a problem, honey.” Sue nodded her head to where Alice’s rod lay all but forgotten against the side of the boat. “Your line’s twitching.”

 

“What? Oh, no.” Alice made a face, but she darted to her rod anyway. “No, no. Bad fish. There are three other hooks to choose from. Go away.”

 

She gave a startled shriek and pitched forward suddenly. Charlie bolted forward, catching her around the waist before she could topple overboard. “What the hell?” Alice said, breathless as she pressed herself back against him.

 

Charlie caught the rod before it could be yanked out of her hands.

 

Billy whistled. “You’ve got a live one, girl.”

 

“It tried to kill me,” Alice said, readjusting her grip on the rod, her hands above and below Charlie’s. “Help me get it, Charlie.”

 

Charlie grunted, fighting the wrestling fish as he helped her reel it in. “Are you sure you never fished before last time?”

 

“Won a goldfish at a fair once. Does that count?”

 

“Holy crow,” Sue said as the fish broke the surface, struggling.

 

“Get the net, Alice,” Charlie instructed. “It’s right there. Get it, quick.”

 

She ducked a little out from under his arms and got the large, hand-held fishing net. To his amusement, she wiggled back under his arms to hold it out.

 

“I think that’s a marlin,” Billy said, peering over the side. “Forget the net. It’s too big for the net. I’ll get the hook.”

 

“A what? Oh.” Alice hissed as Charlie reeled the thing in. “It’s pretty. Charlie, put it back. I don’t want it. It’s too pretty to eat.”

 

Charlie hesitated a moment before Billy was back at their side, equipment in hand. “Don’t even think about it. That one’s a beauty. It’s gotta be upward of sixty pounds at least. You don’t have to eat it. You mount that one and put it on your wall.”

 

“Ugh. That’s not my idea of good decor,” Alice muttered, but she put her hands back on the rod, helping reel it in.

 

It took the four of them, but a twenty-five minute battle later, and Charlie was helping Alice haul the writhing thing up on the boat. He whistled and spun Alice around in a rush of adrenaline. “Sweetheart, you have got some kind of beginner’s luck, I’ll tell you that much.”

 

Billy was chortling, slapping his hand on his thighs. “Boy, I’ll tell you what, Charlie. Any girl who can catch something like this is a keeper.”

 

Charlie settled Alice back on her feet, his arm still tight around her. He looked at his friend and rolled his eyes. “Thanks so much for your vote of support.”

~0~

Time passed.

 

Mike Newton--the town’s most eligible young bachelor--was pushed headlong out of the closet when he and the high school’s principal were found in a compromising position. By a student. The scandal easily eclipsed whatever gossip Charlie and Alice had stoked, and not many people gave them a second glance when they went out together.

 

Bella and Edward went back to school in the fall, and Charlie could forget for a while that his daughter was engaged. Most times. Sometimes, when Alice stayed over, he would wake to find her on Skype with his daughter talking dresses and flowers and cakes. It would have been funny--Bella looked and sounded about as lost as Charlie was about all that stuff--except, well… his daughter was getting married. He still didn’t think it was a great thing, though he was getting used to the idea. And Bella was happy. That was important.

 

In early September, Renee called to coordinate with him on a birthday gift for Bella. Charlie rubbed the back of his neck, self-conscious when he said Alice had already taken him shopping. There was a silence on the other end before Renee burst out laughing.

 

“I’d have paid good money to see that,” she said.

 

Renee hadn’t ever asked him about Alice, which he thought was strange. She was a nosey woman. Well-meaning, but nosey. He’d been waiting for her interrogation since Bella found out about them. He figured she’d told Renee. She must have.

 

“It’s a good thing, you know,” Renee said after a long silence.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“You and this girl. Uh. Woman.”

 

Charlie huffed, leaning back against the wall and staring at the ceiling. For whatever reason, his heart had begun to pound too fast. Renee might have been his ex, but she was his daughter’s mother and the only other woman he’d ever loved. He could tell himself all he wanted her opinion didn’t matter to him, but it did. “You’re not going to tell me it’s weird? She’s Bella’s friend.”

 

“Oh, come on. This is me you’re talking to.” She chuckled. “It’s weird that I swore off marriage only to marry a twenty-eight-year-old ball player. It’s weird that we’re going to have a son-in-law in less than a year. Sweetie. Life’s a little weird.”

 

“It has a few curveballs, I suppose.”

 

“Yeah. Oh, Charlie. It is a good thing. Bella sent me that picture of you with Alice and that marlin. Good god, that thing was about as tall as she was. The way you’re looking at her, though. It’s a good look on you.”

 

“It was the fish,” he said, his tone gruff. “It was a hell of a battle. It was the rush, that’s all.”

 

Renee snorted. “Yeah, right. I saw her too. Neither of you were looking at that fish. You know what I’m talking about.”

 

She was right, of course. In the picture she was talking about, he had his arm around Alice and was grinning at her, his head tilted down so they were almost nose to nose. Alice was looking up at him, her grin just as wide. She had one hand on the slimy fish--she’d made a face, but Billy said she had to be proud of  her prize--but the other was wrapped around Charlie’s waist.

 

“I know,” he said.

 

The man in the picture adored the woman in his arms. And he was happy. Goofy as hell but happy.

 

“It’s sweet that she’ll go fishing. I’m glad for you. Really. Just…”

 

His shoulders tensed. “Just what?”

 

“Be careful. I worry about you.”

 

“What do you worry about?”

 

“She’s not that much older than we were when we were young and foolish together,” Renee said. “I don’t know if I ever told you, Charlie, but I’m sorry. I was careless with you. I didn’t really know any better, but I know it hurt you. That’s my only real concern about you and Alice. She’s young enough that she might be careless.”

 

Charlie was quiet for a moment, fighting back the tightness in his throat. There was no way she knew about his scars. There was no way she knew just how deeply she’d wounded him. He had to swallow down the instinct to panic.

 

It was touching that Renee would care about him like that.

 

He cleared his throat to answer his ex-wife. “Yeah, well. I’m also old enough to handle it if she is.”

 

There was another long pause before Renee spoke again.  Her tone was uncertain and more serious than he was used to hearing. “It’s not my business. I know it isn’t.”

 

“But?”

 

“I know you well enough to know it took a huge leap of faith for you to get in this relationship. I know I’m the poster girl for making random, rash decisions, but just remember it’s okay to keep leaping.” There was humor in her voice as she continued. “Every once in a while. In a responsible manner, of course.”

 

“Oh, of course.”

**~0~**

One night, in the middle of October, Charlie woke with a jolt. There was a low moan caught in his throat and a whimper on his tongue. It took his addled mind a full minute to register what was happening.

 

His cock was enveloped in slick warmth. God, that heat. It came with a firm pressure that travelled the length of his shaft from root to head.

 

It took another minute for him to realize his eyes were already open. His fingers were brushing through smooth, soft hair. Black hair. “Alice?” he mumbled.

 

She released him, replacing her mouth with her hand and a firm grip. “I sure hope you’re not expecting anyone else.”

 

“No, I--” He cut off in a gasp as she ducked her head, taking him in her mouth again. He banged his head back against the pillow and had to fight not to buck his hips. Her fingers had found his balls, and she skimmed as she sucked.

 

Charlie traced her hairline, around her ear. It took him a few minutes to find words at all. “Alice.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

Her hum vibrated along his cock, driving rational thought from his mind. “Uh. Oh, jesus. Damn. Honey, that’s so good.” He tugged at her ear. “Come. I mean. Come up here.”

 

She released him and climbed up his body. He had his hand at the back of her head, pulling her down because he had to kiss her. Thoughts were still difficult to come by. Mostly he was running on instinct. He flipped her onto her back, tugging down pajama pants and pushing her legs apart. She gave a cry when he was buried deep inside her.

 

Then. Then, he could breathe again.

 

He rolled his hips settling on a slow, steady pace. Their eyes locked, and Alice lifted her hands to stroke his cheeks. That tender caress coupled with the look on her face…it was powerful. His body shook with the emotion it stoked in him. He tilted his head down, kissing her slow. Sweet.

 

How could something be so erotic--he could taste the salt of his own skin on her tongue--and just so… big?

 

He rolled them again and steadied her on top of him, his hands at her hips. When she was balanced, bouncing on his cock, he reached up under her shirt, cupping her breasts, brushing his thumbs over her nipples.

 

It wasn’t so long after that they were both sated, and she was curled in the crook of his arm, her head turned against his neck. He stroked her hair, the fog of sleep and sex finally fading.

 

“Guess it was a good idea to give you a key.” She’d chosen to stay with Carlisle and Esme when Bella and Edward went back to school. She was trying to rebuild her concept of a family without Jasper in it, trying not to drive them away.

 

She hummed an acknowledgement that tickled at his neck.

 

“I’m not usually one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what was that all about?” he asked.

 

“I was awake. Missing you.”

 

“So you drove across town?”

 

She snorted. “This is Forks. It’s not a big deal.”

 

And right then, he was suddenly sure it was. He tried to piece together why he thought so, and when he couldn’t, he cupped her cheek to raise her face to his.

 

It didn’t matter why the thought had struck him. He was right. He moved his thumb over her cheeks, her lips. “What happened?”

 

She opened her mouth to deny it, but then she slumped, shaking her head with a rueful smile. “Nothing. Really, it’s nothing. It’s... a good thing.”

 

He rubbed her back. “Tell me.”

 

She rested her head on his chest again, tracing her fingers through his chest hair. “Peter Damon and his wife Charlotte are coming to visit me.” She swallowed hard. “Peter was Jasper’s best friend.”

 

Charlie didn’t know what to say to that.

 

“I’m okay,” Alice said after a minute. She raised his head and kissed his chin. “I just needed you. I needed this.”

  
He smoothed her hair back and smiled. “I’m here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to barburella and jessypt. And jfka06 even though she’ll never see this note because the idea of Charlie/Alice makes her eyes bleed. Lol. I love my girls.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello from Sacramento. Well, kids. Let’s get through this.

Charlie met Alice for lunch the day after she’d seen Peter and Charlotte. “How’d it go?” he asked when they’d settled down. Her hello kiss had been lukewarm and distracted, so he wasn’t expecting to hear anything good.

 

“It was fine.”

 

When she didn’t elaborate, he raised an eyebrow. She slumped in the booth and pressed her lips into a thin line, thinking. “It was as good as it could have been. We had some good moments.”

 

Charlie put his hand, palm up, on the table. She took his offer and twined their fingers together. The waitress came over. By the time she’d taken their order Alice had found her words.

 

“It was hard for them, hearing about you.” She squeezed his hand, looking to him with pleading eyes. “Charlie, I love you. I love you for completely different reasons than I loved Jasper. I told you before, you’re very separate in my mind. I never confuse you for him, but that means there are some times I get angry that it’s you because it’s him I want. Oh.” She ran her free hand over her eyes. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

 

“No it isn’t.” He ran a thumb over her knuckles. “It would be nice if we could wrap everything that happened to us up in its own little box where it couldn’t interfere with anything else, but that’s not how it works.”

 

She smiled, as small as it was. “Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, Peter and Charlotte want me to be happy. I genuinely believe they want me to be happy, it’s just... They made it sound so bad. I was living with you literally as soon as Jasper was in the ground. That was true. You and I both know it wasn’t like that, but I couldn’t make the words come out right enough.”

 

“There probably wasn’t a way.”

 

“No. You’re right.”

 

“So do they still want to see you on their way back out tomorrow?”

 

She nodded and smiled at him with a little more warmth. “It was awkward, you know? But not bad. It was mostly good.”

 

“That’s good.”

**~0~**

Alice was quiet when she came over the next day. He’d cooked dinner—he had an eerie feeling it would be a hard night. She pushed her food around her plate, answering questions often a full minute after he asked.

 

“Okay,” he said, pushing his own plate away. “What happened?”

 

Her eyes darted to his and away. “Nothing,” she said. She was lying, but her tone didn’t leave room for questions. Charlie wondered if this was one of those times he should push.

 

Alice wasn’t usually squirrely. She could be brutally honest, and he liked that. He didn’t like games when they both knew something was wrong and he had no idea if pushing her was going to make it worse. It was already bad enough his skin was crawling.

 

It was awkward. Eventually, he stopped trying to talk and concentrated on distracting himself from the idea this was all going to hell.

 

They were sitting on the couch, together but not. There was way too much space between them, but again in the interest of not making this worse, he didn’t try to close it. The TV was on, but he doubted either of them was watching.

 

So he shouldn’t have been surprised when she yanked the controller out of his hand. She switched off the TV and came to stand in front of him. Charlie’s throat was almost too tight to swallow past.

 

But still, Alice didn’t say anything. She took his hands and pulled him to his feet. She wrapped  her arms around him and pushed up onto her tiptoes. He dipped his head to catch her kiss.

 

His relief was short lived. Her kiss was enthusiastic, but there was something about it he didn’t like. There was something in the way she grabbed his shirt in her fists, tugging him closer. They’d had wild moments, pawing and grasping at each other, but this wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t passion.

 

Or maybe, it wasn’t just passion. There was something in the room with them, something that was making her desperate. She led him up the stairs to his bedroom.

 

It would have been easy to push away the heaviness in the air. There were so many other, more pressing matters to think about.

 

He groaned when her hand drifted down between them.

 

Much, much more pressing.

 

Still, even as her touched her and tasted her and sunk into her, even as her heels dug into his back, something niggled.

 

She was sad.

 

It was a feeling that struck him more than anything. He couldn’t see her. She kept his lips busy with kiss after kiss, and he couldn’t pull back to look at her. But it was almost an act of mourning. Grief.

 

Like she was saying goodbye.

 

He ducked his head, nipping at her neck just a little harder than usual. She yelped, but she wrapped her arms around him tighter.

 

They were rough. Her fingernails dug into the skin of his shoulders. Like they were both trying to hold on to what they had while they still could.

 

Some time later, and though they were both sated, neither had moved to untangled themselves. They were both still awake, and Charlie could practically hear Alice thinking. He traced her features with the tips of his fingers, pushing her hair back over her ear when it fell into her face. He couldn’t stand the idea of not being able to look at her for even a second.

 

Though he believed in facing things head on, Charlie had never in his life wanted to run away. He could have waited. Alice would say what she had to say eventually. He could stick his head in the sand.

 

But no.

 

He took a deep breath, put his fingers to her chin, and tilted her head up to look at him. Her eyes filled with tears, and he stroked his thumbs over her cheeks. He had to swallow hard to get the next words out. “Something’s wrong. Tell me.”

 

She closed her eyes and tilted her forehead against his. She kissed the tip of his nose and his lips.

 

And then she rolled over, sitting up.

 

“Why did you do that?” he asked, watching with dread as she began to pull clothes on.

 

“Because we’re probably going to fight, and it’s going to suck.”

 

Slowly, Charlie sat up. He reached for his shirt. “Why are we going to fight?”

 

She pulled her jeans on and stood up. “Peter and Charlotte think I’m just playing house here in Forks with you.”

 

“That’s ridiculous.”

 

“Is it?”

 

He twisted to look at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. Irritation made his blood boil. Maybe she was right. Maybe they were going to fight. “Well, I don’t know, Alice. You tell me. Is that what you’re doing here?”

 

“No.” The word came out clipped. “But maybe they made a little bit of sense, that’s all.”

 

He yanked on his boxers.“Enlighten me, because you’re not making sense.”

 

“They said Jasper wanted more for me than this.”

 

“Wanted more than what?”

 

She huffed, pacing, still not looking at him. “This is coming out wrong. You know how I feel about you.”

 

“Apparently, you feel like you want more than me.”

 

“No.” She finally looked up at him. Her eyes were filled with tears, and for an instant, he felt like hell. He didn’t want to hurt her, and it was obvious she was hurting. But then he remembered, he hadn’t started this. He hadn’t hurt her, but he couldn’t say the opposite was true.

 

Alice sighed and came to sit beside him. “I don’t want more than you. I want you. But I want more for you. Jasper wanted more for me. What do you want for me? No.” She held up her hand to stop him from answering. “That’s not a good place to start. What do you want for yourself, Charlie?”

 

As many times as he replayed her words in his head, he couldn’t get them to make sense. “What are you talking about?”

 

“Look, it just made me think. Sometimes, when I’m with you, I feel like a little kid. You’ve raised a baby, conquered a whole career, and you have the respect of most of an entire town. I can’t compare to that.”

 

He grunted. “You were married four times longer than I was.” He winced, not sure that was the right thing to say, but she smiled.

 

“What I started to think about today was that, you’ve stopped,” she said.

 

“What?”

 

“You’ve stopped. You go to work. You fish. But you’re not working toward anything.”

 

Charlie knitted his brow, trying to figure out what she was accusing him of. “What do you want me to be working toward?”

 

“This isn’t about me. It’s about you. What do you want?”

 

“I…” He rubbed the back of his neck, and he laughed, more frustrated than amused. “What does anyone want? I want my life to be nice.”

 

She sighed and took his hands. “You’ve lost a lot, okay? And I’m not going to preach to you that you’re lucky. You’re not lucky just because my loss was different. If anything, I’m the lucky one. Every time something in my life floored me, someone pulled me back up. My parents. Jasper. You.

 

“But every time you’ve faced a challenge, you had to pick yourself up. You had to overcome the crappy things your parents said to you. You lost your wife and daughter, and no one was there to listen to you like you’ve listened to me.” She squeezed his hands. “Getting better is hard work with a mountain of support behind you, so I can’t imagine what it took to do it alone.”

 

Charlie pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He didn’t want her praise, especially not when it came with a huge but.

 

“But you have to want more than this,” she said. “You’re older than me, but you’re not old. You can’t be done.”

 

“You’re saying I have no ambition?”

 

“Do you?”

 

Charlie opened his mouth to tell her she had a lot of gall, but he shut it again, swallowing the words. Her accusation chafed. He’d made chief-of-police when he was thirty-three years old, and he hadn’t gotten there just twiddling his thumbs.

 

He pulled his hands out of hers and clenched them in fists by his sides. He didn’t trust himself to speak without saying something he would regret.

 

“There was something true to what Peter and Charlotte said. You’re my safe harbor. I needed a place to retreat. I’ve needed you.”

 

“But you don’t need me anymore.” The words tasted like ash in his mouth.

 

She put both her hands on either side of his face. “For such a smart man, you can be very stupid, Charlie Swan.” Her hands stroked backward into his hair, her look tender. “I love you. Of course I need you, and I want you. Do you understand? I’m not trying to end this. That’s not what I want.”

 

Much more emotional than he wanted to be, he wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against him. He ducked his head, pressing his lips against her throat to hide his stinging eyes.

 

She held him tightly, and before she pulled away, she pressed a kiss to the top of his hair.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t start this the right way at all. I’ve been so afraid all day.”

 

“Of what?”

 

Alice took a shuddering breath, visually steeling herself. “When we got married, Jasper and I had so many plans. There were things we wanted together, and there were things we wanted individually. We’ve talked about that. After Jasper died, it was impossible to think about the future, but today, I realized I’m beginning to want again. More than that, there are things I know for sure I want.

 

“I want to go back to school next semester. With the credits I have, it'll only be a year before I'll need to transfer to a university." Her eyes held his for a beat. There were no universities near Forks, and he knew it. "I think eventually I'll want to have my own business, but I need contacts and I need experience." Other things she couldn't come by easily in Forks.

 

Alice picked up his hand and played with his fingers. "I want kids."

 

His heart skipped a beat.

 

"Jasper and I weren't sure, but now I am. I want to be a mother. Not tomorrow, of course,  but I do want it."

 

She looked up at him again, her eyes red rimmed. "I'm not ready for any of these things right now, but I think you deserve to know, those things are part of my plan. I'm going to start living with these things in mind. I'm going to start moving again. It's only fair you know where I want to go."

 

He read between the lines easily. She wanted him to come with her wherever she was going. It was up to him to decide if he could give up the certainty of his life now to dare to dream of something different.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So much thanks to barburella and jessypt.
> 
> How are we feeling?


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Merry Monday, everyone!

“You see? This is why you don’t date teenagers.”

 

Charlie banged his head on the back of his friend’s couch. “Twenty-three, Billy. She’s twenty-three.”

 

“It’s the same difference. Twenty-three-year-olds are still at that stage where they think they know everything when they really know nothing.” Billy scoffed and shook his head. “She’s got some nerve saying those things to you. Highest paid law enforcement official in town, and you have no ambition? You’ve provided for yourself and your daughter since you were eighteen. Who the hell does she think she is?”

 

Charlie grunted, letting his friend’s word assuage his wounded pride. He had accomplished a lot. “Alice has a good head on her shoulders, but I’m not going to say it wasn’t irritating to listen to.”

 

When it happened, he’d been caught off guard and was on the defense. As the fear she was leaving him outright faded, he’d gotten more and more pissed off. Here it was, two days after it had happened, and he’d related the whole story to Billy and Sue, getting angrier as he repeated the words.

 

He had every right to be proud of himself.

 

“What the hell does she know?” he muttered.

 

“Damn straight,” Billy said.

 

They both downed the rest of their beers on it.

 

Sue, who hadn’t said a word to that point, put chips on the coffee table in front of them and went to sit in the recliner. She didn’t look happy, and that didn’t bode well. “What is it, Sue?” he asked, resigned but also curious as to what she had to say about the situation. He respected Sue as much as Billy. More so, depending on the situation.

 

His friend didn’t answer right away. She rolled her lips, obviously trying to find the right words. “Look, I want to say up front, I don’t blame you for being angry. You have a right to be pissy about the whole situation. Those aren’t easy things to hear, especially from a kid. She’s my daughter’s age, for crying out loud. If my daughter told me something like that, I’d have laughed in her face.”

 

“But?” Billy prompted.

 

“But…you two are confusing hard work and responsibility with ambition.”

 

Charlie looked down at his hands. He already knew Sue was right, but it didn’t make her words easier to hear.

 

“What are you talking about?” Billy asked.

 

“Let me put it to you this way. Charlie, when Bella told you she was getting married, why weren’t you happy for her?”

 

He chuffed but he answered. “Because I want more for her.”

 

“More for her than what you had, you mean. You don’t want her to get stuck.” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Charlie, there’s nothing wrong with surviving. You pay your bills. You provide for your family. There’s honor in that.”

 

“But not ambition,” he said, his tone somewhat bitter.

 

“She’s a smart girl.” Sue smiled, the expression sad. “I got pregnant with Leah when I was sixteen. All of us were young parents, and we all know what it was to struggle just to keep our heads above water. There’s no room there to want something more. When you’re striving just to get the ground beneath your feet, it’s almost impossible to think that far ahead.

 

“But I did. When I was sixteen and Harry was twenty, I talked all the time about how I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to move to California. I wanted a job in a tall office building and a corner office. Doing god knows what.” She laughed. “I never got that far.

 

“I was almost twenty-one when Harry finally told me he had no intention of going anywhere. He was happy here. Little house. Little life.” She took a deep breath. “And then I was pregnant with Seth, so I let go of my dreams and did what I had to to be happy here.”

 

She looked at both of them. “I loved Harry. I loved my life with him, and I love my life with you, Billy. But I resented Harry for a long time. Sometimes, when I think of all the things I haven’t done and I’ll never do, I still resent him. But you were right about one thing, Billy. Age does give you wisdom, and now I know it’s my fault that I don’t have a goal to work to. I’m not dead. I’m not near death or retirement. I still have the time to do almost anything I want to do.” She shrugged.

 

“So anyway, I don’t know. Like I said. I think your Alice is a smart girl. She knows she can’t stay here because she does have ambition. And I’ll bet my right eye the reason she brought it up with you the way she did was because she can’t imagine you’ll be happy either way without ambition of your own. Either you let her go or you follow her and resent her for dragging you somewhere you don’t want to be.” She tilted her head, flashing them a smile. “The only thing the girl needs to learn is how to be gentle with you men’s fragile egos.”

 

Later, when Billy had gone a few doors down to tend to some business, Sue took Charlie’s hands. “You and I both know it could have been you and me instead of me and Billy. Not that I regret it. I love Billy, but I wonder sometimes what could have been. You always wonder.”

 

She squeezed his fingers. “But right now, I’m glad fate didn’t swing our way. I never could have made you as happy as you’ve been with this young woman.” She tilted her head, studying him. “You know, except for Bella coming to live with you a couple of years, your life hasn’t changed since we were all stupid kids together.” Leaning forward, she kissed his forehead in an affectionate gesture. “Change sucks, Charlie, but you’ve rolled with the punches all your life and come out on top. Don’t hold back the one time you’d be doing it for no one but yourself and your own happiness.”

**~0~**

Some days after that, he was on the phone with Renee--she wanted to talk about what they were giving Bella for the wedding he was still trying to forget was coming--when she asked how things with Alice were going.

 

Somehow, in that Renee way of hers, she coaxed the whole story out of him.

 

“Things are okay right now,” he said, wondering for the thousandth time why he was talking to his ex-wife about this. “We have lunch. We have dinner. She stays over sometimes, just like before. We talk.”

 

“Talking. Sure. That’s what you kids are calling it these days,” Renee said, teasing.

 

Charlie rolled his eyes, but he blushed too. “But it’s just there, you know?”

 

Renee was quiet for so long, he called her name, wondering if they’d lost connection. “I’m here,” she said. “There’s something I want to tell you, and you know me. It’s going to come out all wrong.”

 

He cleared his throat, not sure he wanted to hear whatever came with that preface. “I’d like to think I speak Renee by this point.”

 

“Well. Do you know why I left you?”

 

Maybe he was wrong about speaking her language. “I don’t know if I want to talk about this right now.” Not when he felt like there was an axe swinging over the rapidly fraying rope of the second relationship that had ever been important to him.

 

“Argh. See? I told you it was going to come out wrong. Just bear with me. This is important.”

 

Renee took a deep breath and tried again. “Okay. So here’s the thing. Do you remember who you were at seventeen?”

 

“Is this a trick question?”

 

“No. I’m serious. Okay, let me put it another way. Did you always want to be a policeman?”

 

“You know I didn’t. It just made sense. We had a baby and she needed things.”

 

“I know. Honey, I know that. But my point was, being chief of police wasn’t your original end game, was it? It wasn’t what you grew up wanting to be.”

 

“No, it wasn’t. But what does that matter? Most people don’t end up doing what they wanted to do when they were kids.”

 

“You’re right,” she said. “But I want you to be honest with me, and with yourself. I know what Alice told you stung because you’ve worked hard and you’re proud of that. I’m proud of you too for what you’ve accomplished. But being honest, was becoming Chief of Police your goal?”

 

He paused, considering this. “No,” he said after a long minute. In fact, he hadn’t been actively trying to get any of the promotions he’d earned.

 

“You work hard at whatever is put in front of you. You did your duty as a police officer to the fullest extent. You were a dutiful son to your parents. You did what you thought was your duty for me and Bella. But do you see who’s missing from the equation here?”

 

“You’re saying I didn’t do any of it for myself?”

 

“Exactly. So yes, you’ve risen to the top of your career path, but it wasn’t because you’re ambitious and, more importantly, it wasn’t because it was something you wanted to do. You just did it. And that’s why I had to leave.”

 

Charlie raised his eyebrows. “Because I did my job?”

 

“Because after I got pregnant with Bella, you stopped talking about what you wanted to do and started talking about what you needed to do. You got it into your head that you were supposed to raise a family in that little house in that little town and you wouldn’t stop to consider anything else. Honey, Alice had it right. You stopped. You just stopped. Here it is, eighteen years later, and you’re still holding on to a life you never wanted. With both hands. And all your toes.

 

“Charlie, I wasn’t the only one who wanted out of Forks. I know you don’t mind Forks. I know you even like it there, but do you love it? Is it really true that you can’t see yourself anywhere else? Because, honey, there are small towns, and then there are towns like Forks. A town like Forks doesn’t fit with most dreams and certainly not the things we talked about doing when we were kids. That’s the truth of it. That’s what Alice is talking about now, right? Not that she hates Forks, but there just aren’t any opportunities there.”

 

“Maybe the only opportunity I wanted was to raise a family. Isn’t that enough of a goal?”

 

“Of course it is, but it isn’t the only thing you’ve ever wanted to do. It’s okay to have more than one goal, Charlie. And you have to consider compromising. I wanted to raise a family with you. That was my goal too, but if that was all you wanted, you could have raised a family outside of Forks. And that was what I wanted. I don’t really care about my job either. I like it. It pays the bills, but my ambition is all about trying new things. I want to have experiences. Lots of them. That’s my goal, and I couldn’t do it in Forks.

 

“I’m not blaming you, Charlie,” she said before he could get a word in edgewise. “You and I, we both messed up. I didn’t know how to handle it because I wanted so much for us to be the good couple. To raise our baby and support each other through our hopes and dreams. But then you lost yours, and I didn’t know how to help you find them again.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you didn’t get to be a bigger part of Bella’s life. But even if the only thing you ever wanted was to raise a family, that’s still an ambition. That’s still a goal. And you can still have that. Just bend a little. Get a job as a policeman in Seattle. You won’t be Chief of Police, but you’ll be earning a living doing something you know how to do, just like you are now, and you can have a family. You can have babies you’ll see every day.” Renee chuckled. “Hell. You might have your babies there with our grandbabies at this rate. Who knows where Bella and Edward will end up.”

 

“Renee,” he protested, closing his eyes. He groaned, trying to shake away the things he didn’t want to think about--Bella was not going to make him a grandfather for at least a solid decade, please--while at the same time tentatively embracing the things that sounded...great.

 

Bella had been and always would be enough for him. He loved her. But he couldn’t deny the idea of being a father again was appealing. Alice had planted that seed, and it had startled him. He had a grown daughter. He’d never thought he’d have another child.

 

It occurred to him then what Renee had been trying to say. Alice wasn’t throwing a wrench into an amazing life. His life was fine. Uncomplicated but not amazing. She was offering him the chance at a life, at dreams he’d pushed away before he was out of his teens. Because now that Renee mentioned it, he recalled when he was seventeen, there were a lot of things he’d wanted to accomplish. Some of those things he could have done on his own.

 

Why hadn’t he?

 

Had he really just been drifting through life all these years?

 

And was Alice really asking too much, asking him to give up this house where he lived alone and this town who respected him to his face and bashed the woman he loved behind his back? Was it asking too much to ask him to consider if there was something he really wanted to do with his life and to offer her love and support so he could do it?

 

“You know, Charlie, I’ve always been grateful you aren’t a horrible ex. I’ve always been grateful that despite everything, despite the fact I left you alone and took your daughter away from you, you’ve never hated me and you’ve always been my friend. I want you to know, you being happy would make me very happy.”

  
He chuckled because he knew she meant it. Renee always did like beautiful ideas. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to jessypt and barburella.
> 
> So. Probably one more chapter. Then I’ll probably do an epilogue because epilogues are fun!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedication: To my love jessypt for “making” me do this and holding my hand. I had a lot more fun than I expected, and I’m really proud of how it turned out. Thank you. I love you!

There was some crime in Forks. Mostly theft, the occasional robbery, some assault. What there wasn’t much of was murder. In a decade, there had been three murders.

 

Until tonight. Tonight there had been five murders. Well, four murders and a suicide.

 

Charlie had dealt with carnage in his profession. Mostly, though, that was relegated to traffic and hunting accidents.That was horrible enough, but there was some solace in the word accident. He’d seen a human body torn apart, but never like this. What he’d faced all day and through most of the night was a different kind of horrible than anything he’d dealt with in his life, let alone his career.

 

It was after three in the morning when he finally pulled into his driveway. All day long, his mind had been in overdrive, issuing orders, calling the right authorities, dealing with the press and citizens of Forks. The cacophony made it impossible to think about what he was doing, and that was a mixed blessing. But as he drove home, the quiet of the night was surreal.

 

Charlie blinked at the car beside his cruiser, his thoughts processing a full minute behind. Alice. Alice was in the house. He felt the simultaneous twinge of eagerness and dread. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see anyone, but at the same time, he was positive he needed her. But she was supposed to be at her parents’ house. She’d gone back to school that January and had her first midterm the next day.

 

As he got out of the cruiser, each step he took seemed more difficult than the last. Climbing the three stairs to the front door of the house was almost impossible. Getting his fingers to remember how to work the key was ridiculously hard. His hands were trembling, and Charlie wondered if he was cold. It was probably odd that he couldn’t tell, but nothing was clicking just then.

 

When he got inside and closed the door, he stopped. Alice was laying on the couch, asleep, the glow from the television lighting her pretty face. Her textbooks were spread across the coffee table. Charlie stared, waiting for the warmth he typically felt when he looked at her to spread through his body. He felt so empty--devoid of everything except an ache around the hole where his heart should have been.

 

Though it registered he was glad to see her, glad not to be alone in the house, the ache didn’t settle. Charlie made his way to the kitchen in a daze, opened the refrigerator, and promptly forgot what he was doing.

 

He might have stood there for hours. He had no concept of how much time had passed before a gentle hand reached passed him to push the refrigerator door closed. He looked to the side, blinking, and found Alice studying him, tender concern in her expression. She wrapped an arm around his waist and brushed her fingertips down his cheek. “Come on. Come upstairs with me.”

 

Charlie let her lead him to his bedroom, trying to process his slow thoughts. He hadn’t talked to her all day, but she seemed to know something had happened. Why else would she be there?

 

But of course, the news had to have spread like wildfire throughout the whole town. His officers at the station had reported the phones were ringing off the hook. Everyone knew by now. And if Charlie could think hard enough, he could remember how many times he’d had to dismiss Alice’s text messages so he could make the next on a never-ending list of calls he’d had to make that day.

 

He tried to find words, any words, but none came. He was silent and mostly still, only lifting his arms, shuffling his feet or sitting on the bed as she helped him take off his uniform. He had the queer sense he was covered in blood and gore. He even looked at his hands and was surprised, in the most removed sense of the word, to see they were clean.

 

When he’d been stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, Alice sat on the bed beside him. She pulled the comforter up over his shoulders and skimmed the back of her knuckles down his cheek.

 

That soft touch broke something in Charlie. He shuddered and turned a bit on the bed so he could wrap his arms around her. He ducked his head, burying his face in her hair as he struggled to control his ragged breaths.

 

“Talk to me baby,” she said, running her fingers through his hair. “Let it out.”

 

He shook his head. “You don’t want this in your head.” It couldn’t be overstated how much he wished he could erase the images. He couldn’t give them to her. He wouldn’t.

 

Alice pulled back and took his face in her hands. “Look at me,” she said, a quiet command.

 

Again he shook his head. He probably looked like a five-year-old, but he was already too exposed. It was a vulnerability that was growing by the minute, and he couldn’t seem to catch it.

 

“Charlie,” she said.

 

He raised his eyes reluctantly.

 

“You don’t have to be this strong all the time. I’m here.” Her thumbs slid over his lips. “Please let me help you.”

 

What he wanted was to tell her he didn’t need any help. He was having a bad minute. If he breathed in and out, maybe tried to sleep, it would pass. But even as he opened his mouth, he realized he couldn’t say the words. She would know he was lying first of all, and they were so untrue, he couldn’t even shape them.

 

He closed his eyes and shuddered. He had to swallow five times before he could speak. “We got the call at eleven this morning.”

 

It wasn’t that it was easy to tell the story. Every word was difficult to form, every image impossible to describe. But it wasn’t impossible as he would have thought. All day long as he’d been doing his job, he hadn’t wanted to let the things he’d seen settle. The knowledge, the sheer atrocity of it, would kill him.

 

But Alice was there. She rocked him as he spoke. The movement and the warmth of her hand against his back put walls on what he was feeling, kept it from that unbearable apex.

 

“The babies,” he said with a gasp. “The three babies.” His voice was scraped-across-gravel raw and it broke as he said the words. “They had a… five-year-old girl. She reminded me of...of…”

 

Remembering the still form of the little brunette girl, Charlie cracked. He gathered Alice to him and held her as his gasps turned into sobs.

 

Charlie could count on one hand the number of times he’d cried like that in his life. It was better and it was worse.

 

What was worse was the enormity of the loss. He’d known the family, not well but in passing. The father taught at the elementary school. The mother worked at an antique store in Port Angeles. Their babies were well-behaved and adorable. He’d snuck the little brunette girl an extra piece of candy last Halloween because she was shy and adorable and reminded him so much of Bella. It was impossible to comprehend those lives were over, and for them to have met the violent end they had… It was too much.

 

But unlike the other times when he’d lost himself, his control and rationality, to tears, he knew he wasn’t going to fall apart. The pain had its limits, and he could remember that because Alice was there with him.

 

She guided him down on the bed and let him hold her as tightly as he wanted. She stroked his cheeks and kissed his tears away. With her arms around him and her legs tangled up with his, he knew he wasn’t going to fall into the abyss. For as much as he hated being this vulnerable and destroyed, as much as he hated her seeing him like this, her presence made all the difference.

 

It was a long time before he’d purged the weight of the injustice and loss. Eventually, though, he calmed and told her the rest. He spoke in a shaking, tiny voice of blood and tiny bodies. He cried again, though not like before. Just tears. Just an excess of emotion spilling out. Alice cried with him, holding his hands between them and brushing the tips of their noses together.

 

When his words petered out, she kissed his forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said, and the words were like balm on his wounds. Or maybe like a morphine pump spreading a few minutes' relief through this blood.

 

He sighed, sniffling. “I am too.” He cupped his hand around the back of her head, just needing to be as close as he could. With the numbness from before gone, the hole at his center was cold. He shivered.

 

Alice drew the blankets up around them. “Can you sleep?”

 

Charlie sniffled again and considered that. He was tired. Bone tired. But it was that kind of exhaustion that was beyond sleep. “I don’t know.”

 

She kissed his forehead. “Close your eyes.”

 

It was easy to obey her. It was easier to give up thinking for a little while. Alice pressed tiny kisses along his eyebrows and his nose and his cheeks. She hummed to him and rubbed the back of his head and his neck. Slowly, so slowly, the warmth he always felt when she was with him began to creep back into his veins, and he succombed to sleep.

~0~

The next morning he woke to the tickle of kisses against his back. He was curled on his side with Alice behind him, her body tucked against his. Her fingers stroked under his undershirt along his stomach. Unlike other mornings when he’d awaken to her touch, this wasn’t meant to entice him. She was comforting him, letting him wake to safety and love and everything that was beautiful in a world that could be so ugly.

 

He opened his eyes. They ached. He closed them again and shifted in Alice’s hold so when he opened his eyes the next time, it was her face he saw.

 

She smiled at him, tucking her hands beneath her cheek. “Hi.”

 

“Hey,” he said. His voice was scratchy. “What time is it?”

 

“Almost seven.”

 

He grunted. “I have to go back to the station.” There was still so much work to do.

 

She hummed. “Okay. Take a shower. I’ll make you breakfast.”

 

He remembered this whole body ache from the deepest days of his depression, when it always felt as though he’d climbed a mountain and every one of his muscles screamed. He could have slept for an age.

 

But he got up. He showered and got as far as wrapping the towel around his waist before he ran out of energy. He leaned up against the counter, his head bowed, every thought lost to him except for how much he didn’t want to be who he was today. He didn’t want to have to deal with the aftermath of those grisly murders.

 

He heard Alice coming up the stairs, but he didn’t look up until she’d come in the bathroom. She set a cup of coffee on the counter, and wrapped her arms around his waist. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of coffee and steam. He put a hand over hers, skimming his fingertips over her skin and letting himself have one small smile.

 

“You have school today?” he asked, needing to talk about something normal and good. He got his fingers between hers and squeezed.

 

She grumbled. “Mid-terms, yeah.” She kissed his back. “I don’t want to leave you today.”

 

It meant the world to him that she’d say that. He turned, leaning up against the counter and pulling her closer, his hand on her waist. He stroked his thumb over her hip and just looked at her. He wanted to tell her he would be okay with this memory of her pretty face looking up at him and her, but he felt too foolish. Instead, he brought his hands up to her cheeks and tilted her head up so he could kiss her properly. “I’m fine,” he said, not lying.

 

She smiled again and leaned into him. “I’m sending my mother to bring you lunch.” She raised a finger. “Don’t argue. You didn’t eat at all yesterday, did you?”

 

“I had a bagel in the morning,” he said gruffly.

 

She rolled her eyes and took a step back. “Come on. Come have breakfast with me, and if we both make it through today, we’ll figure out a way to celebrate.”

 

He exhaled slowly, feeling more prepared to face the day than he had only a few minutes before. “Deal.”

_**~0~** _

They did make it through that day and the rest of the week and then the next before the murder investigation and school calmed down.

 

Charlie had swallowed his pride and had enlisted the help of his future son-in-law--nope, he still wasn’t used to that--to figure out where he could take Alice that included the words charming and romantic. He’d never been good at that kind of thing.

 

Edward sighed. “Bella hardly ever lets me do these things for her, but Alice will love it.”

 

He found a secluded bed and breakfast near Big Sur and took care of all the travel arrangements. He’d even convinced Rosalie to pack a bag for her, so all Charlie had to do was pick her up from work early that afternoon and drive her to Sea-Tac.

 

Alice was nearly going out of her skin by the time they got to the airport. “Who are you and what have you done with Charlie Swan? I love Charlie, but spontaneous isn’t one of his many charms.”

 

He chuckled, enjoying the way she bounced in her seat. He’d been holding her hand over the shifter, and he brought it up now to kiss her knuckles. “And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

 

The whole plane ride, he had to keep his lips pressed together to keep from laughing as Alice nearly came undone. All week long, despite Edward’s reassurances, he’d been second guessing himself, wondering if this whole plan was stupid. But as much as he could see he was driving Alice crazy, she was also happy. Her eyes were lit with excitement and even her wheedling was intimate. She poked at him and leaned on his chest, looking up at him with big puppy-dog eyes.

 

He ruffled her hair affectionately. “You’ll survive, sweetheart. I promise.”

 

She pouted and he gently nipped at her lower lip until she giggled.

 

The drive from Monterey airport to Big Sur was gorgeous. He took the scenic route, of course, and watched out of the corner of his eye as Alice took in the cliffs, the beach, and the pristine waters below. “You know, we have a beach at home,” she said, teasing him.

 

“Well, okay then. I’ll turn the car around.” He put his blinker on.

 

“No! I mean. Let’s get where we’re going, huh?”

 

He chuckled and took her hand again.

 

Ironically, he’d made comments like that more than once in his life. Whenever someone talked about going on a big, romantic getaway, he hadn’t seen the point. She was right. There were plenty of beaches much closer by, and he knew from experience they could have a perfectly romantic night in the comforts of his own home. No one needed pomp and circumstance to be in love.

 

But, as with most things, it was different with Alice. Yeah, it was a beach and they did have beaches at home, but there was a charm to it. The cliffs of Monterey were beautiful in a completely different way than the cliffs of the Pacific Northwest, and he found he was excited to spend a few days alone with Alice here, away from everything they knew.

 

When Alice saw the Post Ranch Inn, her eyes near about popped out of her head. “Oh my God. Charlie, this is too much.”

 

He had to laugh because, again, she was right. And again, he’d never seen the point of these kinds of grand gestures. So many better things he could spend money on, but what the hell? He was in love, and putting that ear-to-ear grin of excitement on her face just didn’t come with a price tag.

 

While he checked them in, she skittered from one side of the lobby to the next, taking in the grandness of the place, the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the ocean. Fancy didn’t even begin to cover it. He should have told Edward to include the word “rustic” in his plans, but then, fancy was good too. Alice had an appreciation for fancy.

 

The suite took them both by surprise. Charlie had never known a room to make him feel shabby before, but this one did. For a handful of seconds, he was sure he didn’t belong there. He wondered what he’d been thinking. This place was way out of his price range even with the super-sleuth Internet deals Edward had found for him.

 

But then Alice squeaked happily and rushed into the suite. She picked things up, put them down. She flitted from room to room--Charlie had never been to a hotel with more than one room, but whatever--and then outside onto the private patio. “There’s a hot tub out here. On the deck. There is a hot tub on the deck,” she called out to him. She continued talking in exclamation points and jumped when she turned to find he’d joined her outside. She giggled, resting her palms on his chest. “You’re insane, Charlie Swan. I can’t believe you did this.”

 

“Hmm.” He traced the outline of her chin and the shape of her smile. “Charlie was abducted. He’s too sedate for this kind of thing. I’m just the schmuck who loves you.”

 

“Oh, Charlie.” She stroked her hands down his face. “I love you so much.”

 

Definitely worth it, he thought as they kissed with the sea air tousling their hair. He ran his hands down her back, up, down, and cupped her ass, bringing her against him. She grabbed his shirt in her fists and dragged him back inside, keeping their lips pressed together for kiss after kiss. She walked backward, him forward, and when he couldn’t wait for their awkward, stumbling steps anymore, he picked Alice up and carried her the rest of the way to the bed.

 

She unbuttoned his jeans and he pulled her shirt up and off. She scooted backward, wiggling out of her pants, and he climbed over her. Her touch was fire on his skin, and he would have been happy to burn to death in her flame.

 

They made love quick and passionate. That kind of lovemaking that was born of intense adoration, when you just felt so unbelievably lucky to hold a person, you knew it couldn’t be real, so you had to capture it as quickly as possible.

 

Afterwards, they lay curled together in bed, ordering room service and trying to decide if they were going to bother leaving their suite to explore the beaches. They ate and teased each other and kissed. And as the sun was setting they made love again outside on the deck. It was slow this time, Alice moving over him as he moved his hands over every inch of her skin. Their foreheads touched and they kissed infrequently, mostly exchanging hot, panting puffs of air in the otherwise chilly evening.

 

Afterward she lay pliant, draped over him, their skin touching where their robes had fallen to the side. His lips pressed idle kisses against her crown as they watched the last light of the sun disappear beneath the waterline.

 

“Alice?” he said. It was the first word either of them had spoken since they’d come outside over an hour ago.

 

“Hmm?” She didn’t lift her head. She sounded like she was almost asleep.

 

He almost told her to forget it. As it was, a lump had risen in his throat that was painful to swallow around.

 

Alice put her hand against his chest. “Charlie? Are you okay? Your heart is beating so fast.”

 

He huffed. “Yeah. I just have something to say to you.”

 

That got her attention. She lifted her head to look at him. “Something to say that would make you do all this?” She gestured around them and behind them to the suite.

 

He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Look, I don’t know how fair this is to tell you. I know it’s been months, but you were honest with me about what you want, and I figure it’s only fair you know where my head’s at.”

 

It took some effort, but he lifted his head so he could look into her eyes. Once done, he was glad he’d summoned the courage. Looking at her, he was sure of the words he was going to say, and he didn’t regret them, even if they would throw a wrench into their otherwise nice life. “The truth is...I want to marry you.”

 

As he’d expected, she gave a little jolt, but she didn’t look horrified, so he continued. “I don’t mean tomorrow. Timing is…. Well, I don’t know. I have no idea. I know how you feel about Jasper, and truth told, it was you and him not that long ago. I know all that. I just think you should know it’s how I feel, and it’s what I want.”

 

As long as he’d been alone, the words were difficult to say. He’d gotten used to the idea of being alone, of living his life day by day. This was daring to hope for so much more.

 

Alice’s eyes watered and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Charlie,” she whispered. “What do you want with a messed up wreck like me?”

 

He laughed without humor and hugged her closer. “I mean this in the best way, okay? But I didn’t know what a wreck I was until I had you.”

 

Her eyebrows shot up. “There’s a best way to mean that?”

 

“Yeah. Yes.” He took her face in his hands. “I didn’t know I wasn’t living before. You were right. I’ve had months to think about it, and you were right. I was drifting. Alice, I have no damn idea what the hell I want to do with my life. Something. Now that I think about it, I want something. And I’m going to figure it out.” He brushed her hair back away from her eyes. “The only thing I know for sure about the rest of my life is I want it to be the rest of ours.”

 

She closed her eyes as two tears fell and she tilted her head to catch his kiss. She kissed him once, twice. Again and again. “Yes,” she whispered against his lips.

**~The End~**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Don’t panic!
> 
> I do intend to write at least three scenes for funsies. E/B’s wedding (because grumpy, emotional Charlie is going to be so much fun), Charlie and Alice’s wedding, and … well, I’ll leave that as a surprise.
> 
> What scenes, if any, would you like to see?


	23. Post-take 1: Wedding Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello, lovelies. Let’s see how these crazy kids are doing.

A pleasant sensation roused Charlie from sleep. Fingertips skimmed over his arms, and there was a warm weight draped over his back. He hummed. He never minded waking up to this.

 

Alice pressed a kiss to the shell of his ear, and she sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. “Do these ever stop feeling like a brand of stupidity?” she asked, her fingers again tracing lines on his upper arm.

 

His scars, he realized. Charlie hummed and rolled over onto his back. He reached a hand up to caress her cheek, searching her eyes as he tried to get his brain to wake up. “Every time I saw those scars before, I felt like an asshole...until I met you.”

 

Alice arched an eyebrow. “Me?”

 

Charlie traced a finger around her lips. “Watching you go through all that… It just made me realize that this thing that made us do this.” He moved his hand to cup her upper arm. “It’s real. I know you’re not weak. You’re anything but weak. I may not have been through what you went through, but because of you, I know it wasn’t nothing.”

 

Alice sighed, her expression far off. “So it takes that long, huh?”

 

He tapped the underside of her chin until her eyes met his. “You do get to a point where you mostly stop thinking about them. They’re part of you, but nothing too awful.” He cupped her cheek tenderly. “And you won’t think about adding new ones. That happens a lot sooner.”

 

Alice shivered. When he tugged on her hand, she laid down and rested her head on his chest. They were quiet for a while, just cuddling, but then Alice began to stroke absently at the skin around his belly button. Charlie sucked in a breath and grabbed her wrist. She looked up, smiling, and he ran his thumb over her knuckles.

 

"Do you still think about it?” he asked.

 

“Less than I did,” Alice said, not so much troubled as reflective. She sighed. “I don’t want to be fucked up all my life.”

 

He tilted her face up. The more life he lived, the more he realized no one out there was completely healthy. No one felt like they were in control all the time. Everyone was, more or less, fucked up.

 

Alice was always going to have these low moments, some lower than others. He couldn’t do anything about that, but he could be there for her.

 

And he could definitely distract her.

 

He kissed the top of her head and, when she looked up, he kissed her lips. It was a slow kiss, a leading one. Charlie skimmed his fingers down her side, teasing the small strip of flesh between her camisole and her cotton boy shorts.

 

Alice groaned and pushed away from him. “Can’t start that, Chief. I have to get out of bed.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

She sat up and laughed. “Why? Oh, Charlie. You’re in trouble. How much did you drink last night?

 

Charlie had to think about it. He had drunk a lot last night. He remembered not being able to focus on his reflection in the mirror when he brushed his teeth. He’d drunk because he was alone. Because…

 

Because his daughter and his girlfriend were out celebrating Bella’s last day as a single woman.

 

“Christ,” Charlie muttered, rubbing his eyes. “I’m going back to sleep.”

 

Alice leaned down to kiss his forehead. “You do that. I have to go enhance Bella’s natural beauty.” She fixed him with a stern look. “If I have to come in here to dress you, I’m going to be very displeased, Charles Swan.”

 

Charlie fought a smirk. “Yes, ma’am.”

**~0~**

Some hours later, Charlie found himself at the Cullen’s house, where the ceremony was being held. He’d seen Bella on the drive over, of course, but then she’d been sequestered upstairs. Charlie mostly hovered, feeling out of place with everyone rushing around.

 

“Charlie.”

 

Charlie swung around at the sound of his ex-wife’s voice. Even all these years and so much pain later, Renee’s radiant smile made him smile back. It was different now, though, Charlie realized. Every time he’d had cause to see Renee after they divorced, there was a bittersweetness to their meeting. It was like she brought the sunshine with her, but he could only feel the warmth from a distance.

 

Now, though, her brightness had paled. He could still appreciate her. She was aging beautifully, and she radiated a positive, if somewhat frenzied, energy. But his attention had shifted permanently.

 

Charlie couldn’t deny the relief he felt as he hugged her. He’d been just a little nervous about seeing her again.

 

Renee held him at arm’s length, giving him a light smack on the chest with one hand. “Oh, my goodness, Charlie. I’ve been dying to talk to you since last night.”

 

Oh, right. That was the other reason Charlie had been drinking. Not only was his not-quite-twenty year old daughter getting married today, but last night, his ex-wife and his girlfriend had spent many hours together...and he hadn’t been invited. “You didn’t get Bella drunk, did you?” he asked, deflecting.

 

Renee pretended to look scandalized. “The day before her wedding? Of course not. On her sixteenth birthday? Eh.” She shrugged, taking a step back from him. “Alice is great. And she loves you.” She smirked, hands on her hips. “She wouldn’t let me forget that last night, believe me.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“It’s not a bad thing.” Renee chuckled. “A few passive aggressive jibes.”

 

Charlie frowned, but Renee just shook her head. “It’s fine. She’s going to show her age every once in awhile, and I’m glad she’s so protective of you. You deserve that. Someone looking out for you.” She winked. “Keeping you safe from scary people like me.”

 

Renee reached out and straightened his tie. She chuckled.

 

“What?” Charlie asked.

 

“I was just thinking this has to be the first wedding you’ve worn one of these to.” The look in her eyes was teasing.

 

He smirked. “That’s because eighteen-year-old me wouldn’t have looked nearly this hot in a suit.”

 

Her smile broadened. “Love is a good look on you, Charlie.” She offered her arm. “Let’s go see our kid. You know I’m blaming this whole thing on you, right?”

 

“She spent her formative years with you,” Charlie said, threading his arm through hers.

 

“Yeah, but I was a horrible influence. I’m not the one who taught her about commitment. I can’t commit to a hobby from one week to the next.”

 

“What about Phil?”

 

Renee’s features brightened, and her cheeks flushed. “Oh, Phil. He’s an adventure. He’s something new every week.” She shrugged. “It works for us.”

 

They were outside the door to where Alice and Rosalie had Bella sequestered. He sighed and nodded to the door. “Think this will work for them?”

 

Renee sucked in a breath through her teeth. “They’re intense, right? I don’t know. They’re in love and smarter than we were, and they’re happy.” She squeezed his arm and let him go. “We made a great kid. She’s going to have a beautiful life, pitfalls and all.”

 

Charlie’s lip twitched. “Yeah.” He took a deep breath and pulled the gift they’d decided on out of his inner pocket. “Let’s do this.”

 

Esme and Carlisle’s bathroom was as big as some studio apartments. It had an antechamber. Charlie didn’t know why an antechamber was necessary in any room let alone a bathroom, but he supposed that was what happened when a Cullen woman was given leave to build an entire house.

 

He and Renee must have been quieter than they realized, because none of the girls turned around when they came in the room. They both stopped short when they realized Bella was freaking out.

 

“Oh, man,” she said “Am I doing this? I am doing this. Of course I’m doing this. I want this. I want him. I love him so much.” She put her hand over her heart. “So why does it feel like I’m about to throw up?”

 

To Charlie’s surprise, Rosalie and Alice both laughed.

 

“You know, the closer we got to Vegas, Jasper started babbling,” Alice said. “I mean, really babbling. He was talking about the most ridiculous things. The kind of crap you blurt out when someone wakes you up from a particularly fucked up dream? He was spewing that kind of crap wide awake.”

 

“I fainted,” Rosalie said. “It took them three hours to do my hair. I took one look and fainted. I had to wear it down.”

 

Bella giggled. It was a high-pitched, breathy sound.

 

“Your turn, Alice,” Rosalie said. “She just needs to be distracted.”

 

“Um. Well, in January, before I start at the University, I’m going to be your stepmother. We were kind of hoping you’d be the flowergirl.”

 

Bella, Rosalie, and Renee all made varied noises of strangled surprise. Charlie just groaned and banged his forehead against the wall.

 

Alice lifted her head, that faux-sheepish look on her face belied by the mischievous twinkle in her eyes. She winked at him, and Charlie smiled back.

 

“This is how you choose to calm me down? You tell me one of my best friends is going to be my stepmother and I’m going to share my in-laws with my father?” Bella put a hand to her cheek. “This whole family is going to need therapy.”

 

“Oh, look. Your makeup is perfect when you’re flushed that color red,” Alice said. She patted Bella’s shoulder. “We’ll give you a few minutes with your parents before we come finish. It’s almost time!” She looked over at Rosalie. “Come on, Rose.”

 

They had taken only a couple of steps away before Bella’s hand darted out, grabbing Alice. “You don’t really want me to be a flower girl, right?”

 

Alice laughed and kissed her cheek. “Don’t ever call me mom,” was all she said, and then she left.

 

When Rosalie and Alice were gone, both Charlie’s daughter and his ex-wife pounced on him.

 

“Dad, did you really propose to Alice without telling me?”

 

“How did you do it? I want the whole story,” Renee said, bouncing on her feet.

 

Charlie’s cheeks were hot. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Technically, I asked her months ago.” He fixed Renee with a look before she could ask. “I haven’t changed that much. It wasn’t a big production. She doesn’t even have a ring. We weren’t in a rush. We had a lot of things to figure out before we could do that.”

 

“But January? That’s true?” Bella asked.

 

Despite himself, Charlie couldn’t fight his smile. “I wasn’t going to tell you until after all this.” He gestured at her. “I didn’t want to step on your toes.”

 

Bella rolled her eyes. “Alice can’t help herself,” she said fondly.

 

“Well, anyway. Enough about that for now.” Charlie cleared his throat. “We have something for you.”

**~0~**

An hour later, Charlie took Bella’s arm firmly.

 

“Don’t let me fall, Dad.”

 

“I have you,” he said.

 

It was a short walk but long enough for him to remember everything.

 

The desperate fear of a boy who wasn’t ready to be a father mingled with a joy he didn’t have the words to explain.

 

Being eighteen, holding his baby girl in his arms for the first time, wanting nothing more than to be the best father in the world.

 

Staring at the empty crib after Renee left, fearing his baby, his precious baby, would grow up to hate him.

 

Bella being a toddler when he saw her again, hiding behind her mother’s legs, her eyes wide and afraid of him and how the sight just about broke his heart. But then his brave baby girl swallowed a whimper and took a tentative step toward him. It was like the sun breaking through the clouds of a hurricane.

 

Fifteen years of nothing special punctuated by the two weeks a year he got to see his toddler, his child, his pre-teen, his teenage daughter.

 

Getting Bella back when she was seventeen, a complex and lovely young woman he didn’t quite understand. She wasn’t his stranger daughter anymore, and now more than ever he could see the bits and pieces of himself he’d somehow instilled despite the distance.

 

Charlie hugged Bella to him, too choked with emotion for any final words of wisdom. Her eyes were shining too, and she mouthed the words, “I love you, Dad.”

 

Funny, he thought as he put her trembling hand in Edward’s. When Renee was pregnant, he had such plans for their baby, this baby. He’d been certain if things didn’t go exactly as planned, she would be raised wrong. Yet here she was, a beautiful young woman with a solid head on her shoulders.

 

Letting go of Bella, Charlie went to his seat. On his one side, Renee sniffled and kissed his cheek. On his other, Alice took his hand and threaded their fingers together. He looked at Alice, thought about starting this whole journey all over again, and smiled.

**~0~**

In January, five months after his daughter’s wedding, the Cullen family hosted another wedding.

 

Their family had thought they would want a bigger wedding seeing as they both came from quickie first marriages with no pomp or circumstance. But Alice in particular surprised everyone by wanting an intimate family affair.

 

“Only my favorite, most important people,” she said, and Charlie agreed.

 

Besides the Cullen clan in its entirety--Bella included, of course--Billy and Sue were the only guests.

 

“I still can’t figure how a little gal got you to change your entire life for her,” Billy said, mostly teasing him.

 

Charlie just shook his head. “Not for her. Well. Not just for her.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, old man. I’m still going to come down and fish with you.”

 

“Yeah? Who invited you?”

 

Charlie handed his friend a glass of champagne and told him to shut it.

 

Not many of the typical traditions were held. When Father Weber arrived, Alice and Charlie stood at the front together with the family gathered around them. They held hands and repeated their vows. Charlie would have felt ridiculous for smiling like an idiot except Alice looked just as silly.

 

And beautiful. Good god, she was beautiful.

  
And when he kissed her, he knew it was going to be a beautiful life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to Barburella and Jessypt. I made her cry. This made me happy. Because I’m a horrible person? I don’t know. You decide.
> 
> I was nominated for several TwiFic Fandom awards. Thank you! That’s fabulous. You can vote for me or for others at twificfandomawards dot blogspot dot com.


	24. Post-take 2: Family Bush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hola, my dears!

Laying with his feet hanging off the couch, Charlie looked over to where his wife was standing face to face with his daughter, and he started to laugh. It was a low chuckle that started deep in his chest. He threw an arm over his eyes, just laughing and smiling to himself.

 

“Just what is so funny?”

 

Speak of the devil. Charlie opened his eyes and grinned up at his ex-wife. “I was just thinking about you,” he said.

 

Renee crossed her arms. “Oh, really?”

 

“You jinxed me.”

 

“What?”

 

Charlie nodded to where Bella and Alice were still talking. They were a comfortable distance apart but as they were both pregnant to there, their bellies met in the middle. “Remember?” he asked Renee. “You said I’d have a baby and a grandbaby at the same time. You jinxed me.”

 

“Ah, you’re not blaming me for this one.” She huffed, shaking her head. “I realize it’s hypocritical of me to say so, but really? Both you and Bella should know better. I learned from our mistake. Apparently, you didn’t.”

 

Charlie just chuckled again.

 

The pregnancy hadn’t really been an accident. They weren’t trying for a baby, that much was true. It had been one of those things. In the heat of the moment, they found themselves lacking any method of birth control. Alice had hedged it wasn’t likely she’d get pregnant that night. He’d pointed out it wasn’t impossible, and she’d looked at him, her eyes sparkling, and said, “Would it be a bad thing if it happened?”

 

Alice was finishing up her degree, and they were settled in Seattle. No, it wouldn’t be the worst thing, and it wasn’t.

 

Bella, on the other hand. Well, that had been a surprise, but it wasn’t the end of the world either. He looked across the room, watching as Edward came up behind Bella. He put a glass of lemonade in her hand and put his hand to her belly, kissing her cheek. That boy--his brother-in-law, christ that was weird--cherished Bella. He would cherish and protect their daughter.

 

They were young, but they would be okay.

 

“I still think you’re crazy,” Renee said, drawing Charlie’s attention again. “I can’t imagine doing it all again. The crying, and the helplessness, and oh my goodness, the poop.”

 

“So much poop,” Charlie said, but he was grinning.

 

Renee smiled back at him. “You’re happy,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

 

“Yep.”

 

“So you like teaching at the police academy?”

 

Charlie sat up straight and shrugged. “I was good at being a cop. I’m good at teaching people to be cops.”

 

“I’m just surprised. You uprooted your life, but you’re still a cop.”

 

“A job was never going to be my passion, if that’s what you’re getting at. It works for me, though. I put in my eight to five, then I come home. I’ve been trying to figure out the whole cooking thing, because Alice is way too busy with school and at her new job.”

 

“Very domestic.”

 

Charlie’s lip twitched. “It’s good. I have plans, you know? Billy wants us to open an ocean fishing charter.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“We take people out on the ocean. Help them fish. He’s got the boat already.” He waved a hand. “We were thinking about trying our luck on the weekends during the season. We’ll see how it goes. It’d be a nice way to pick up a few extra bucks, but mostly I want to come home every day to my family.”

 

Renee laughed. “Your family. You know you puff up like a peacock when you say that?” She patted his shoulder before she wandered off again, going to talk to Bella.

 

At first, Alice stayed chatting with Renee, Bella, and Edward. But after another minute, she began to dig her fists into her back, and Charlie cleared his throat. Alice looked over and smiled ruefully when he extended his hand. She came willingly, and let him pull her down on the couch beside him.

 

Charlie put his hand to her skin under her shirt, massaging from the base of her spine on upward. “You’re overdoing it,” he said. “I don’t know much about baby shower etiquette, but I’m pretty sure the mother-to-be isn’t supposed to be the one throwing herself a baby shower.”

 

She screwed up her face, glaring at him with no heat. “I’m not throwing myself a baby shower. It’s not my fault Bella decided to steal my thunder.”

 

“Steal your thunder? Alice, you’re due after her.”

 

His beautiful wife waved a hand. “Semantics,” she said, then she moaned as he moved his fingers out from under her shirt to her neck. “God that’s good.”

 

“Try to take it easy, sweetheart,” he said, knowing full well it was useless to tell her to sit her ass down and rest.

 

She turned her head to smile at him. “I’ll try.”

**~0~**

Alice wasn’t over her past. Charlie doubted she’d ever fully be over it. Her mother’s death at her father’s hands, his and her stepmother’s abuse, the loss of her little sister due to circumstance, ostracization from her peers in the wake of her marriage to Jasper, and then losing him on top of it? Of course that wasn’t going to be something she could just shake off.

 

She still went to therapy once a month, and she had for years. There were bad days--bad weeks really--and there were a few very bad nights.

 

Charlie blinked awake in the middle of the night to the sound of Alice’s whimpers. He reached over to turn on the light, already calling her name in a soft, soothing voice. Slowly, giving her a chance to get used to his presence so he wouldn’t drive her further into panic, Charlie wrapped an arm around her and drew her back against his chest.

 

“Alice.” He pressed a kiss behind her ear. “Wake up, sweetheart. You’re fine. Shhh. You’re fine.” He caught her flailing hands and pressed her palms to her belly. Recently, whenever her anxiety got the better of her, this had helped more than anything--feeling their son safe and snug beneath her hands. “Wake up for me.”

 

Gradually her whimpers quieted. She moved her hands, following the kicks and taking deep breaths. Charlie stroked her hair back away from her face and kissed the side of her temple. She turned in his arms and buried her head at his neck.

 

“I dreamed you were gone,” she said in a shaky whisper. “That’s the only thing in the world I’m scared of. Losing you. And Peter.” She trembled. “I’m just so scared.”

 

He wondered if she knew how amazing she was. It took an incredible amount of strength to live again after what she’d lost. Not to survive, to truly live. And this was why. The more she gained, the more she stood to lose, and she knew what that loss felt like. The fear it could happen again, there was no promise it wouldn’t, would have been crippling in another person.

 

“Peter’s fine, sweetheart,” he said, putting his hand over hers on her belly. He stroked along her knuckles and kissed her forehead again.

 

In the darkness, it was easier to put words to things he didn’t like to think about. “It scares me too,” he admitted, lips against her hair.

 

She raised her head to look at him.

 

He raised his hand to trace the shape of her nose and wipe the remnants of tears from under her eyes. It felt silly when he was looking at her, when she was warm and solid in his arms. Sometimes, though, especially after she got pregnant, his heart would seize, and he’d be positive she would come to her senses. She could decide as easily as Renee had that she couldn’t be with someone like him.

 

Would she take Peter if she ever did?

 

Alice sniffled, some of the misery draining from her features as she reached up to take his face in her hands. She offered him a watery smile. “I promise I won’t leave you if you promise you won’t leave me.”

 

He chuckled and took her hands in his. “Easiest deal I’ll ever make.”

 

“Well, I’m going to hold you to that.” Her grin turned wicked. “Might be a challenge for you later.”

 

“Oh, really? Why is that?”

 

“Well you are so much older than me.”

 

She squeaked when he tickled her beneath her neck and groaned when he stifled her giggles with his mouth. Since he wasn’t about to be rough with her while she was pregnant, he concentrated instead on kissing her senseless in retaliation.

 

The end result was the same. Alice’s sex drive hadn’t abated at all even though her belly was almost as big as she was. She was ungainly, but with his help, she straddled him. He helped her balance, holding her hands steady as she lowered herself on him.

 

More than anything else, this connection, being able to see the love in her eyes and feel her around him, reminded them both that neither of them were going anywhere.

**~0~**

Two months later, Charlie blinked awake again in the middle of the night. Beside him, Alice groaned, and Charlie figured out the noise that had woken him was a squalling from the baby monitor.

 

“I’m going to die,” Alice said, mostly into her pillow. “Our child is trying to kill us. People aren’t meant to go for three weeks straight without sleep, Charlie. It’s not possible.”

 

Despite his tiredness, Charlie smiled. He drew his fingers down her cheek. “I’ll go.”

 

She didn’t argue. She just slumped into her pillow, already asleep again.

 

Charlie stretched, trying to shake off the stupor of sleep. The soft whimpering was beginning to get urgent, so he hurried down the hall to his son’s nursery, yawning all the way.

 

“Oh,” he said, leaning on the crib. “So you’re the troublemaker.” He reached down and pulled not his three-week-old son, but his four-week-old granddaughter up. Settling her into the crook of his arm, he ran the back of his knuckles over his still-sleeping son’s cheek.

 

Michella gave an impatient cry, and Charlie shushed her. “Hush, Ella. You’re going to wake your uncle up.”

 

“You know, if Bella catches you calling her Ella, she’s going to have a fit,” Edward said around a yawn, startling Charlie. Bella had conked out on the couch mid-visit, and since Charlie’s new house had a guest room, she and Edward had stayed over.

 

He turned to his son-in-brother-in-law, setting Ella on the changing table. “See, of the two of us, I’m not actually scared of my daughter.” He wrinkled his nose as he undid the baby’s diaper. “Your daughter on the other hand...this is a little scary.”

 

Edward rubbed his fist in his eyes and stood by Charlie, catching the baby’s foot and looking down on her with sleepy, adoring eyes. “Micky, tell Grandpa he can’t be mean to you.”

 

“Grandpa,” Charlie repeated with a snort, shaking his head. “I’ll get used to that never.” He looked over his shoulder when Edward yawned for fourth time in a minute. “Go on. I’ve got Micky.”

 

Edward nodded obediently and ambled off down the hallway.

 

No sooner had Charlie gotten Micky changed and settled back in the crib than Peter woke. “Don’t be a follower, Petey,” Charlie admonished, setting him on the changing table.

 

Finally, both babies were dry, content, and still awake. Charlie looked down on them, bemused and in love. It was strange. They were the physical embodiment of the two lives he straddled, both nestled snug, existing together in harmony when it all could have been so much drama.

 

His granddaughter. He fingered one of Michella’s chocolate brown curls. His curls. His and Bella’s hair color. Bella had been the beginning of his first life, and Micky was the end result. She was the end of his journey as a parent, watching his daughter start the cycle all over again.

 

Then, his son. His life had restarted almost from scratch when he fell in love with Alice. Peter was the second chance he never let himself dream he could have. He was bald as bald could be, but he had Charlie’s nose.

 

He stuck his hands down in the crib, letting each of the babies grip a finger. “Well, kids, I’ll tell you one thing. Life...It’s interesting. Never would have believed this story if I hadn’t lived it. And I apologize in advance for all the confusion. Family trees shouldn’t get this tangled, but you know, sh...stuff happens. Guess we have a family bush.”

 

“You are goofy as heck, Charlie Swan.”

 

Charlie glanced over his shoulder as Alice wrapped her arms around his waist. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

 

“Yes, well. You talk too much, and the baby monitor is on.” She looked down at their son and smiled. “Don’t tell Edward and Bella, but our baby is prettier than theirs.”

 

“You know you’re Micky’s step-grandma, right?”

 

Alice giggled. “Oh, my god. And her aunt.” She peered into the crib. “You poor kids are going to need so much therapy.”

 

She tugged on Charlie’s waistband. “Come on, Uncle-Grandpa. We should get our twenty minutes of sleep.”

  
Charlie curled his fingers around Peter and Micky’s hands and then let go. He twined his fingers with his wife’s and followed her back down the hallway to their bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Many thanks to barburella and jessypt.
> 
> I think for now I’m going to mark this complete. I want to write another gratuitous chapter, but it hasn’t gelled in my head yet. 
> 
> So for the time being, thank you for taking this journey with me. I’m very proud of this little piece and it was fun frolicking with Charlie and Alice. I hope you had a good time too. 
> 
> MWAH.


End file.
